Quote of the Day

Music: what so many sentences aspire to be.

-- Mary Oliver, "More Evidence"

Quote of the Day

Usually, when we talk about creativity, it’s about self-expression, which is great, but for work to be art or design, there has to be someone on the other end. The audience makes the work come alive.

-- Austin Kleon, The Great Discontent Interview

Quote of the Day

Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.  Every advance into knowledge opens new prospects, and produces new incitements to farther progress.

-- Samuel Johnson

Quote of the Day

Nothing will work unless you do.

-- Maya Angelou

Quote of the Day

In my opinion, the most ordinary things, the most common and familiar, if we could see them in their true light, would turn out to be the grandest miracles . . . and the most marvelous examples.

-- Michel de Montaigne, “On Experience”

Quote of the Day

Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know,
Are a substantial world, both pure and good:
Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness will grow.

-- William Wordsworth

Quote of the Day

Public opinion is always more tyrannical towards those who obviously fear it than towards those who feel indifferent to it.

-- Bertrand Russell, Conquest of Happiness

Quote of the Day

Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no mater how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what's inside you, to make your soul grow.

-- Kurt Vonnegut, Letter to Xavier High School

Quote of the Day

You have to learn to be unafraid when you're a nobody, because you're going to be really fucking afraid when you're a somebody and all the lights are on you.

-- Lady Gaga, The New Yorker

Quote of the Day

You increase your self-respect when you feel you've done everything you ought to have done, and if there is nothing else to enjoy, there remains that chief of pleasures, the feeling of being pleased with oneself.  A man gets an immense amount of satisfaction from the knowledge of having done good work and of having made the best use of his day, and when I am in this state I find that I thoroughly enjoy my rest and even the mildest forms of recreation.
 
-- Eugene Delacroix

Quote of the Day

In all creative work, there is a balance between what you want to give the world and what the world needs: if you’re lucky, your work is in the middle. Because of that, I believe that every job has a service element to it. If you want to make creativity your job, you have to think about what your creativity is in service of…What can you contribute?

-- Austin Kleon, The Great Discontent Interview

Quote of the Day

Feedback is great for telling you what you did wrong.  It's terrible at telling you what you should do next.

-- Phil Libin

Quote of the Day

They always say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.

-- Andy Warhol

Quote of the Day

Recollect that only when habits of order are formed can we advance to really interesting fields of action -- and consequently accumulate grain on grain of wilful choice like a very miser -- never forgetting how one link dropped undoes an infinite number.

-- William James

Quote of the Day

I realized I was going to die.  And when that gets into your mind...it utterly changed me...I thought, I'm not going to sit here and wait for things to happen, I'm going to make them happen, and if people think I'm an idiot I don't care.

-- Wayne Coyne

Quote of the Day

It is salvation if one can step forth from the
clutter of one's mind into that open space --
that almost holy space -- called work.

-- Mary Oliver, "More Evidence"

Quote of the Day

In the biblical narrative, hierarchy enters human relationship as part of the curse, and begins with man's oppression of women -- "your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you" (Genesis 3:16).  But with Christ, hierarchal relationships are exposed for the sham that they are, as the last are made first, the first are made last, the poor are blessed, the meek inherit the earth, and the God of the universe takes the form of a slave.

-- Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, p. 219

Quote of the Day

But when something ghastly happens, it is not helpful to many people if you say that it's all part of God's perfect plan, or that it's for the highest good of every person in the drama, or that more will be revealed, even if that is all true.  Because at least for me, if someone's cute position minimizes the crucifixion, it's bullshit.  Which I say with love.

-- Anne Lamott, Stitches, p. 8-9

Quote of the Day

The satisfaction gained from the achievement of a large undertaking is one of the most substantial that life affords.

-- Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project, p. 226

Quote of the Day

Happiness comes when your work and words are of benefit to yourself and others.

-- Jack Kornfield, Buddha's Little Instruction Book, p. 24

Quote of the Day

Life has much uneasiness; that is certain.  Always remember that, and it will never surprise you.

-- James Boswell

Quote of the Day

It sounds a little extreme, but in this day and age, if your work isn't online, it doesn't exist.  We all have the opportunity to use our voices, to have our say, but so many of us are wasting it.  If you want people to know about what you do and the things you care about, you have to share.

-- Austin Kleon, Show Your Work!, p. 23

Quote of the Day

And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

-- Mary Oliver, "Swan"

Quote of the Day

Biblical passages about wives submitting to their husbands are not, as many Christians assume, rooted in a culture epitomized by June Cleaver's kitchen, but in a culture epitomized by the Greco-Roman household codes, which gave men unilateral authority over their wives, slaves, and children.  As Sharyn Dowd has observed, the apostles "advocated this system not because God had revealed it as the divine will for Christian homes, but because it was the only stable and respectable system anyone knew about.  It was the best the culture had to offer."

-- Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, p. 216-217

Quote of the Day

The search for meaning will fill you with a sense of meaning.  Otherwise life passes by in about seven weeks, and if you are not paying attention and savoring it as it unfurls, you will wake up one day in deep regret.  It's much better to wake up now in deep regret, desperate not to waste more of your life obsessing and striving for meaningless crap.  Because you will have finally awakened.

-- Anne Lamott, Stitches, p. 87

Quote of the Day

But whatever your passion might be, happiness research predicts that making time for a passion and treating it as a real priority instead of an "extra" to be fitted in at a free moment (which many people practically never have) will bring a tremendous happiness boost.

-- Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project, p, 223

Quote of the Day

Weigh the true advantages of forgiveness and resentment to the heart.  Then choose.

-- Jack Kornfield, Buddha's Little Instruction Book, p. 22

Quote of the Day

My experience has been that most really serious creative people I know have very, very routine and not particularly glamorous work habits.

-- John Adams