"Whatever humans have learned had to be learned as a consequence only of trial and error experience. Humans have learned only through mistakes."
–– Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983), American architect, designer, inventor, futurist and writer
via Book of Commonplace 2005-2006, p. 184.
"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable for forming such opinions."
–– Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German-born American theoretical physicist
via Book of Commonplace 2005-2006, p. 183.
"The ancestor of every action is a thought."
–– Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), American philosopher and writer
via Book of Commonplace 2005-2006, p. 182.
"Every increased possession loads us with new weariness."
–– John Ruskin (1819-1900), British art critic, writer, and philosopher
via Book of Commonplace 2005-2006, p. 178.
"Every discovery by definition is unpredictable. If it were predictable it would not be a discovery. Creativity exposes unpredictable things to be discovered."
–– Alan Fletcher (1931-2006), British graphic designer and writer
Source: Alan Fletcher. The Art of Looking Sideways. London: Phaidon Press, 2001; p.31.
via Book of Commonplace 2005-2006, p. 171.
"The life you live is the legacy you leave."
–– Lynne Twist, American writer and public speaker
Source: Lynne Twist. The Soul of Money: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Life. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2003; p. 225.
via Book of Commonplace 2005-2006, p. 154.
"If you are coming to help me, you are wasting your time, but if you are coming because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together."
–– Lilla Watson (b. 1940), a Murri Gangulu (Indigenous Australian) visual artist, activist, and academic
via Book of Commonplace 2005-2006, p. 153.
"We go on multiplying our conveniences only to multiply our cares. We increase our possessions only to the enlargement of our anxieties."
–– Anna Callender Brackett (1836-1911), American philosopher, translator, and educator
via Book of Commonplace 2005-2006, p. 146.
"If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way."
–– Napoleon Hill (1883-1970), American writer
via Book of Commonplace 2005-2006, p. 134.
"Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void."
–– Simone Weil (1909-1943), French activist, mystic, and philosopher
via Book of Commonplace 2005-2006, p. 134
"Your resistance to change is likely to reach its peak when significant change is imminent."
–– George Leonard (1923-2010), American writer, editor and educator
via Book of Commonplace 2005-2006, p. 133
"Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind."
–– Marcel Proust (1871-1922), French writer and critic
via Book of Commonplace 2005-2006, p. 132
"After all, perhaps the greatness of art lies in the perpetual tension between beauty and pain, the love of men and the madness of creation, unbearable solitude and the exhausting crowd, rejection and consent."
–– Albert Camus (1913-1960), French writer and philosopher
via Book of Commonplace 2005-2006, p. 132
"All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story, to vomit the anguish up."
–– James Baldwin (1924-1987), American writer and activist
via Book of Commonplace 2005-2006, p. 132
"The very things we wish to avoid, neglect, and flee from turn out to be the 'prima materia' from which all real growth comes."
–– Andrew Harvey (b. 1952), British writer and religious scholar
via Book of Commonplace 2005-2006, p. 131
"He who cannot change the very fabric of his thought will never be able to change reality."
–– Anwar Sadat (1918-1981), Egyptian politician and President of Egypt (1970-1981)
via Book of Commonplace 2005-2006, p. 131
"I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're doing something. So that's my wish... Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life. Whatever it is you're scared to doing, do it. Make your mistakes, next year and forever."
–– Neil Gaiman (b. 1960), British author and screenwriter
"One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was: go slow to go fast. We live as though there aren't enough hours in the day but if we do each thing calmly and carefully we will get it done quicker and with much less stress."
–– Viggo Mortensen (b. 1958), American actor and author
"The future is not inevitable. It's up to you."
–– character D.I. Alex Hardy to his daughter Daisy Hardy in Broadchurch episode 3.6
via Book of Commonplace 2020-2021, p. 109.
"You know you have reached perfection of design, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away."
–– Antoine De Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944), French writer and aviator
via Book of Commonplace 2020-2021, p. 111
"Everything you have ever wanted is on the other side of fear."
–– George Washington Addair (1931-2012), American guru
"A life of making isn't a series of shows, or projects, or productions, or things: it is an everyday practice. It is a practice of questions more than answers, of waiting to find what you need more often than knowing what you need to do. Waiting, like listening and meandering, is best when it is an active and not a passive state."
–– Ann Hamilton (b. 1956), American installation artist
Source: Art Propelled, January 4, 2020.
via Book of Commonplace 2020-2021, p. 100.
"Stephen put his hand on the boy's arm and said, "Patience. Patience. With patience comes choice, and with choice comes power."
–– Louise Penny (b. 1958), Canadian writer
Source: Louise Penny. All the Devils are Here. New York: Minotaur Books, 2020; p. 4.
via Book of Commonplace 2020-2021, p. 104.
"Every morning, therefore, at about 9:30 after breakfast each of us, as if moved by a law of unquestioned nature, went off and 'worked' until lunch at one. It is surprising how much one can produce in a year, whether of buns or books or pots or pictures, if one works hard and professionally for three and a half hours every day for 330 days. That was why, despite her disabilities, Virginia was able to produce so very much."
–– Leonard Woolf (1880-1969), British political theorist and writer
Source: tumblr.austinkleon.com, Tuesday May 25, 2021
via: Book of Commonplace 2020-2021, p. 107.
"Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence ... and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content."
–– Helen Keller (1880-1968), American author, disability rights advocate, political activist, and lecturer
via Book of Commonplace 2020-2021, p. 107.
"Clashing is what makes things interesting."
–– Rayman Boozer, American Interior Designer
Source: Living Etc., April 2021, p. 53
"A climate is a language you learn through your skin."
–– Helen Humphreys (b. 1961), British-born Canadian writer
Source: Helen Humphreys. 'Climatology.' Anthem. London, Ontario: Brick Books, 1999; p. 28.
"That's what winter is: an exercise in remembering how to still yourself then how to come pliantly back to life again."
–– Ali Smith (b. 1962), Scottish writer
"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives."
–– Annie Dillard (b. 1945), American writer
"If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us."
–– Hermann Hesse (1877-1962), German-born Swiss poet and novelist
via Book of Commonplace 2005-2006, p. 131.
