The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.
~ George Orwell, Politics and the English Language
Category Archives: Quotes
Heroes & Heroines
Unconsciously we all have a standard by which we measure other men, and if we examine closely we find that this standard is a very simple one, and is this: we admire them, we envy them, for great qualities we ourselves lack. Hero worship consists in just that. Our heroes are men who do things which we recognize, with regret, and sometimes with a secret shame, that we cannot do. We find not much in ourselves to admire, we are always privately wanting to be like somebody else. If everybody was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.
~Mark Twain
How true…
Growing up, one of my very favourite English language books is “Heroes & Heroines”. The heroic characters depicted in this book were all Caucasians, mostly Americans. Fortunately enough for me, I grew up knowing and admiring the paths of many non-Caucasian heroes. One of the advantages of being a Chinese Malaysian.
Bobiverse
A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.
~George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons
I am currently reading a trilogy by Dennis E. Taylor. By doing so, I am exploring and travelling through the Bobiverse. And wow, this is turning into an incredible journey!
Economy Of Choice
If you allow the economy to determine your choice, you will never be in charge of your own economy.
~Grant Cardone
Listen
Listen with curiosity. Speak with honesty. Act with integrity. The greatest problem with communication is we don’t listen to understand. We listen to reply. When we listen with curiosity, we don’t listen with the intent to reply. We listen for what’s behind the words.
~Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Keep Learning
Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty.
~Henry Ford
Neighbours
Discover the fulfilment of intimate relationships with flesh-and-blood neighbours and team-mates in concrete place and time, and we escape the pressure of mainstream media to channel intimacy only as virtual embrace.
~Jose Panate-Aceves and John Hayes
Be Kind
Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.
~Desmond Tutu
Rain Poetry
The rain to the wind said,
You push and I’ll pelt.
They so smote the garden bed
That the flowers actually knelt,
And lay lodged–though not dead.
I know how the flowers felt.
~Robert Frost