Commonplace List
by alattethingstodo · 17 things on Twos
- "Do fewer things. Do this work at a natural pace. Obsess over quality. Say No more often"- Cal Newport, Slow Productivity
- The philosopher George Santayana once wrote “there are books in which the footnotes, or the comments scrawled by some reader’s hand in the margin, are more interesting than the text
- It’s a version of what the scholar and civil rights activist WEB Du Bois called double consciousness: “It is a peculiar sensation … this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.”
- Intelligence is compression of information.
- FATE - Focus, Attention, Time, Energy
- “The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.”
— Thich Nhat Hanh
- You could be seeing and hearing, but you might not be noticing and listening," "Which is, I think, most of the time what we do.
- As Scottish scientist James Clerk Maxwell once said: “Thoroughly conscious ignorance is the prelude to every real advance in science.” An antilibrary is a reminder of everything we don’t know.
- “marianne had the sense that her real life was happening somewhere very far away, happening without her.” - sally rooney, normal people
- “loneliness is the human condition. cultivate it. the way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. never expect to outgrow loneliness. never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. an intelligent, sensitive person is the exception, the very great exception. if you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. the best you'll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way.” -janet fitch, white oleander
- It’s not the dream job or the happiest it’s the values attached to the job that will help feel that way
- “I have observed that male writers tend to get asked what they think, and women what they feel,” Eleanor Catton
It is worth pointing out that this has been the point of makeup since time immemorial: to conceal flaws and let observers think they are perceptive by finding the result beautiful. Beauty – historically the main outlet for feminine artistic production – is not in the eye of the beholder. But that proverb exists for a reason: it flatters the beholder, not the producer of beauty. (This does get flipped on its head in very specific contexts: during conversations about rape, for instance. The “what was she wearing?” line of argument is one of the few contexts in which women’s passive agency over the spectator is both recognised and granted more power than it ought to have.)
- “there is a loneliness that can be rocked. arms crossed, knees drawn up, holding, holding on, this motion, unlike a ship's, smooths and contains the rocker. it's an inside kind—wrapped tight like skin. then there is the loneliness that roams. no rocking can hold it down. it is alive. on its own. a dry and spreading thing that makes the sound of one's own feet going seem to come from a far-off place.” - toni morrison, beloved
- A famous Susan Sontag meditation on this aesthetic paradigm bears repeating: “The great advantage men have is that our culture allows two standards of male beauty: the boy and the man. The beauty of a boy resembles the beauty of a girl. In both sexes, it is a fragile kind of beauty and flourishes naturally only in the early part of the life cycle. Happily, men are able to accept themselves under another standard of good looks – heavier, rougher, more thickly built … There is no equivalent of this second standard for women. The single standard of beauty for women dictates that they must go on having clear skin. Every wrinkle, every line, every grey hair, is a defeat.”
- To procrastinate is to be entitled. It is arrogant. It assumes there will be a later. It assumes you’ll have the discipline to get to it later (despite not having the discipline now). - Daily Stoic
- Success isn't linear. It's like planting a seed—you won't see results right away, but keep nurturing it. Those small, consistent efforts are building something great beneath the surface. One day, you'll break through and bloom.
- "Maybe the journey isn't about becoming anything. Maybe it's about unbecoming everything that isn't really you, so that you can be who you were meant to be in the first place."