"Pleasing things: finding a large number of tales that one has not read before. Or acquiring the second volume of a tale whose first volume one has enjoyed. But often it is a disappointment."

--

Source : Sei Shōnagon (1967). “The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon”

Sei Shonagon

#Disappointment Quotes #Numbers Quotes #Firsts Quotes

“I barely slept during high school because I was too busy dancing and acting all the time. The plan was to go to my dream college that had one of the best performing arts programs, and then go to LA to follow my dream of being an actress.”
“Mary Lincoln provided Elizabeth Keckley with opportunities for social and economic advancement she probably had never imagined during her years as a slave, while Elizabeth offered Mary the loyal, steadfast friendship she craved but had always found so elusive.”
“The Constitution has been eviscerated while Democrats have stood by with nary a whimper. It is a gutless, unprincipled party, bought and paid for by the same interests that buy and pay for the Republican Party.”
“He who takes his fill of every pleasure ... becomes depraved; while he who avoids all pleasures alike ... becomes insensible.”
“Get punctual, bring energy and creativity to your work, and stay with a project until it's completed (and then double-check the results). These habits will make you indispensable.”
“I'm kind of a mash-up of taste - Graham Greene and Jane Austen; W.G. Sebald and Alice Munro.”
“Every age and every nation has certain characteristic vices, which prevail almost universally, which scarcely any person scruples to avow, and which even rigid moralists but faintly censure. Succeeding generations change the fashion of their morals with the fashion of their hats and their coaches; take some other kind of wickedness under their patronage, and wonder at the depravity of their ancestors.”
“So many things were testing his faith. There was the Bible, of course, but the Bible was a book, and so were Bleak House, Treasure Island, Ethan Frome and The Last of the Mohicans. Did it then seem probable, as he had once overheard Dunbar ask, that the answers to riddles of creation would be supplied by people too ignorant to understand the mechanics of rainfall? Had Almighty God, in all His infinite wisdom, really been afraid that men six thousand years ago would succeed in building a tower to heaven?”

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