It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life?daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right ...
Remember: It's not a lie, if you believe it.
- George Costanza ...
Funnel-web spiders are medium-to-large robust spiders that tend to be dark or black in colour. These spiders measure up to 5 cm. They have stout legs and prominent fang-bearing chelicerae that deliver a neurotoxic venom. The common name derives from the funnel-like entrance to silk-lined subterranean burrows built by both males and females. The Sydney funnel-web spider (A robustus) is responsible ...
Married in White, you have chosen right. Married in Grey, you will go far away, Married in Black, you will wish yourself back, Married in Red, you will wish yourself dead, Married in Green, ashamed to be seen, Married in Blue, you will always be true, Married in Pearl, you will live in a whirl, Married in Yellow, ashamed of your fellow, Married in Brown, you will live in the town, Married in Pink, ...
Fear is an emotion that makes us blind. How many things are we afraid of? We're afraid to turn off the lights when our hands are wet. We're afraid to stick a knife into the toaster to get the stuck English muffin without unplugging it first. We're afraid of what the doctor may tell us when the physical exam is over; when the airplane suddenly takes a great unearthly lurch in midair. We're afraid t ...
Most people reach a point in their lives, some at eighteen and some at 88, when they ask, 'Work, buy consume, die: is that all there is?' Each time someone asks such a question the market shudders, because if there is more to life than earning and consuming the odds are that when people realise it they will devote less time to paid work and consume less.
-Clive Hamilton, Affluenza ...
I can't tell if a straw ever saved a drowning man, but I know that a mere glance is enough to make despair pause. For in truth we who are creatures of impulse are not creatures of despair.
- Joseph Conrad, Chance ...
What's the worst part of the job?
"Skydiving suicides."
Skydiving suicides?
"Yeah these nutters come on board the plane wanting to top themselves. Bloody ridiculous. They just jump out of the plane and never pull the bloody rip cord. Some of them get out of their harnesses before they hit the ground. Other ones wait till the chute is pulled, then cut the cords one by one and fall from there. Wo ...
Bodies have a natural tendency to float. When they are alive. After the lungs fill with water, the body loses its buoyancy and sinks to the ocean floor. It lies there for a while, perhaps twenty-four hours. Perhaps forty-eight. But while the body dies, things inside it live on. Little microbes, bacterium. Symbiotic organisms. They're in you, right now. They keep you alive, you keep them alive. The ...
If you are always unhappy, you're doing it wrong. If people don't like you, but you wished they liked you, so your solution is to pretend you don't wish they liked you, or that you don't like them, you're doing it wrong. If you hate everything; if you can't even stop complaining about the things you LIKE, you're doing it wrong. If you don't know you're right until you hear it from someone else, bu ...
When you look at me, do you see someone breathing? You see a man, alive. But like the poker player who is representing a strong hand when he really has nothing, it is a lie. I am a lie. I died nine months ago, my body just refused to go with me. The heart keeps beating, the stomach keeps calling for more sustenance, the lungs keep screaming for breath. But there's nothing alive underneath. I may a ...
Now, the value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it. Indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices.
- Oscar Wilde ...
"All of life is an exercise in marketing." my father used to tell me. It was one of his favourite expressions. Another favourite, or perhaps a different way of putting the first: "Perception is everything." It took me many years to realize it, but the concept was really his religion. If you believed it strongly enough, it was true. He insisted that I take a course in marketing before I could study ...
It's odd but even when I was a kid, I would write about 'old and other times' as though I had a lot of years behind me. Now I do, so there is a difference in the weight of memory. When you're young, you're still 'becoming', now at my age I am more concerned with 'being'. And not too long from now I'll be driven by 'surviving', I'm sure. I kind of miss that 'becoming' stage, as most times you reall ...
Fairhaven, VIC - Local authorities have alerted State Police, Regional Coast Guard and residents to be on the lookout for a body or bodies that may wash up on nearby beaches after finding the wreckage of a car at the bottom of a cliff near Apollo Bay, about 60km South of Fairhaven on the Great South Road.
"The vehicle in question appears to have been driven at excessive speeds on a very windy ro ...
"Behold yon miserable creature. That Point is a Being like ourselves, but confined to the non-dimensional Gulf. He is himself his own World, his own Universe; of any other than himself he can form no conception; he knows not Length, nor Breadth, nor Height, for he has had no experience of them; he has no cognizance even of the number Two; nor has he a thought of Plurality; for he is himself his On ...
As far as I know, there is no proof whatever of the existence of an objective reality apart from our senses, and I do not see why we should accept the outside world as such solely by virtue of our senses. These reality enthusiasts are possibly playing at hide-and-seek; at any rate they like to hide themselves, though they are not usually aware of it. They simply do it because they happen to have b ...
We have to reject the intuitively appealing idea that the brain is storing an accurate and strictly isomorphic representation of the world. To some degree, it is storing perceptual distortions, illusions, and extracting relationships among elements. It is computing a reality for us, one that is rich in complexity and beauty. A basic piece of evidence for such a view is the simple fact that light w ...
"You may have heard that dying is unpleasant, but don't you believe it. Dying is the sweetest, tenderest, most sensuous sensation I have ever experienced. Death comes disguised as a sympathetic friend ... It is easy to die. You have to fight to live."
- Edward V. Rickenbacker, WWI flying ace, struggling to live after being severely injured in a civilian plane crash ...
" I consider it essential for you to know that Languille displayed an extraordinary sang-froid and even courage from the moment when he was told, that his last hour had come, until the moment when he walked firmly to the scaffold. It may well be, in fact, that the conditions for observation, and consequently the phenomena, differ greatly according to whether the condemned persons retain all th ...
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