I love life. But I don’t love life because it is pretty. Prettiness is only clothes-deep. I am a truer lover than that. I love it naked. There is beauty to me even in its ugliness. In fact, I deny the ugliness entirely, for its vices are often nobler than its virtues, and nearly always closer to a revelation… To me, the tragic alone has that significant beauty which is truth. It is the meaning of life — and the hope. The noblest is eternally the most tragic. The people who succeed and do not push on to a greater failure are the spiritual middle-classers. Their stopping at success is the proof of their compromising insignificance. How petty their dreams must have been!

— Eugene O’Neill

Beautiful perspective. Optimism at its zenith. Portrays the difference between looking at life skin deep vs without mirrors.

We must believe in free will — we have no choice.

— Isaac Bashevis Singer

Ironically funny, but my thoughts exactly, especially in this time when every nook and crook wants to emphasize fate and destiny.

There is a computer disease that anybody who works with computers knows about. It’s a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is that you ‘play’ with them!

— Richard Feynman

Ha, another one bites the dust.

We are often so blinded by the question whether we could,
We fail to consider whether we really should.

Never falters, the darkness of the night,
Pure and cherished, abstaining light.
Artists enrich, absolute spectrums colored
But miss serene beauty in pitch black.

Black, defines purity
Shades change name and emotion.
Undulating thoughts, stationary once
Dissipate into the abyss, from whence it came.

Under blissful stillness in the mountains,
Currents stream decisively, the veins lands yet see;
Nourishing what is, impartial, without a cause,
August setting to teach life lessons.

Beaten down path, the flow downstream,
Doubts remain to tread anew or to follow.
Calm and with purpose, conjoined into mother’s yoke.

Coarse and turbulent, the vivid upstream,
Discloses without bias, doorways supreme.
Sweet the prize, harder still the path.

Twin decisions lie ahead.
Swim against, reach the source,
Remain still, go with the flow.
How decides one?

Really like this story. We often forget that what we are now is an accumulation of experiences over years of successful endeavors and failed attempts.

Legend has it that Pablo Picasso was sketching in the park when a bold woman approached him.

“It’s you — Picasso, the great artist! Oh, you must sketch my portrait! I insist.”

So Picasso agreed to sketch her. After studying her for a moment, he used a single pencil stroke to create her portrait. He handed the women his work of art.

“It’s perfect!” she gushed. “You managed to capture my essence with one stroke, in one moment. Thank you! How much do I owe you?”

“Five thousand dollars,” the artist replied.

“But, what?” the woman sputtered. “How could you want so much money for this picture? It only took you a second to draw it!”

To which Picasso responded, “Madame, it took me my entire life.”

h/t David Airey

There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

This is a timeless observation. More true than ever, now.

Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Here’s my take.