A Drunk starts talking to a tourist in a Scottish pub.
He says “Do you see that dock over there? I built that myself, stoned by stone. But do they call me MacGregor the dock builder?”
“No.”
“Do you see that bridge over there? I built that too! But do they call me MacGregor the bridge builder?”
“No.”
“But you fuck one sheep…”
There's a story about a shoe salesman in Los Angeles in the 1950s, a very successful entrepreneur who owned a string of women's shoe stores.
A journalist asked him, "What's your secret?"
And he said, "Two, not three."
The journalist says, "What do you mean?"
The shoe salesman said, "If a woman comes into my store, I'll bring her a pair of shoes. She'll try them on."
"And she'll say, 'Can I see that pair please?' And I'll bring out second pair of shoes."
"And then she'll say, 'Can also I see that pair please?'"
And he'll say, "Which pair would you like me to take away?"
You see, he found was that, when the customer had a choice of three, they bought none. And when they had their choice of two, they bought one.
Two, not three.
Too much choice is overwhelming.
I went from being a bad writer to a good writer after taking a one-day course in “business writing.” I couldn’t believe how simple it was. I’ll tell you the main tricks here so you don’t have to waste a day in class.Business writing is about clarity and persuasion. The main technique is keeping things simple. Simple writing is persuasive.A good argument in five sentences will sway more people than a brilliant argument in a hundred sentences. Don’t fight it. Simple means getting rid of extra words. Don’t write, “He was very happy” when you can write “He was happy.” You think the word “very” adds something. It doesn’t. Prune your sentences.Humor writing is a lot like business writing. It needs to be simple. The main difference is in the choice of words. For humor, don’t say “drink” when you can say “swill.”Your first sentence needs to grab the reader. Go back and read my first sentence to this post. I rewrote it a dozen times. It makes you curious. That’s the key.Write short sentences. Avoid putting multiple thoughts in one sentence. Readers aren’t as smart as you’d think.Learn how brains organize ideas. Readers comprehend “the boy hit the ball” quicker than “the ball was hit by the boy.” Both sentences mean the same, but it’s easier to imagine the object (the boy) before the action (the hitting). All brains work that way. (Notice I didn’t say, “That is the way all brains work”?)That’s it. You just learned 80% of the rules of good writing. You’re welcome.
The real problem of humanity is the following:
We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.
Every heart has its graveyard.Names we never speak,buried beneath all that we had to doto survive.I've laid flowers at the feet of lovesI outgrew,but still visit in dreams.I've lit candles for the oneswho left and never came back.Not every goodbye deserves a monument,but I still remember them.How could I forgetwhen their ghosts still haunt me?Some things just endand some people don't come back.And some nights,I still whisper into the dark,"If I could, Id love you better next time."
It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is; it doesn’t matter how smart you are.
If it doesn’t agree with the experiment, it’s wrong.
If I had my life to live over again,
I'd find you sooner and love you longer.
~ seen on a coffee mug
Chester: Oh, marriages are very healthy, sir. They say married men live much longer than bachelors.Tom Bowen (played by Fred Astaire): If that's true, they're only trying to outlive their wives so they can be bachelors again.
Strong minds discuss ideas,
average minds discuss events,
weak minds discuss people.
~ Socrates
Winter must be cold for those with no warm memories.
~ Terry (Deborah Kerr), to Nickie (Cary Grant), in An Affair to Remember
If people were negative, they were not in the next meeting.Elon was technically very strong, even though he was just learning about rockets.The one thing I noticed, if people were negative, they were not in the next meeting.He said, a company is a bunch of vectors. Each person is a vector and they need to point in the direction that you want to go.Bureaucracy and office politics and low morale, it's almost random vectors.He was always about making all the vectors which are all the employees pointing in the right direction. Forward, moving forward.
Go sell crazy somewhere else - we're all stocked up here.
~ Melvin Udall (played by Jack Nicholson), in As Good As It Gets
If violent crime is to be curbed, it is only the intended victim who can do it.The felon does not fear the police, and he fears neither judge nor jury.Therefore, what he must be taught to fear is his victim.
You can have a million problems,
but when you have a health problem,
that is your number one problem.
~ heard on TV on a medical center ad
We must all suffer one of two things:the pain of disciplineor the pain of regret or disappointment.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
It’s easier for some people to live with comforting lies than uncomfortable truths.
Everybody is a genius.
But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree,
it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
~ Albert Einstein
If you wanna remain happy, stop caring about what other people think.
Regret is the emotional price we pay for free will.
No complaining about a situation unless you're prepared to do something to make it better.If you see a problem and you don't come to the table with a potential solution, I don't want to hear your whining about how bad it is.It couldn't be that bad if it hasn't motivated you to try to fix it.
Ryan: I don't get it. I don't get what I did wrong.
Dwight: Not everything's a lesson, Ryan. Sometimes you just fail.
~ Dwight and Ryan, in The Office
You don't have to turn this into something.
It doesn't have to upset you.
The nearer a man comes to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength.
Motivation is a spark.Discipline is the engine.Identity is the fuel.
When a man's father dies, he realizes that the one man who truly wanted him to be better than him is gone.When my daddy died, I didn't have nobody to say they was proud of me.
Be the oldest person in the gym, not the youngest person in the nursing home.
~ found on the Interwebs
Nothing disturbs me more than the glorification of stupidity
~ Carl Sagan
Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake's plane was shot down over the Sea of Japan.
There were no survivors.
~ Radar O'Reilly, Mash
It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies...
ALLCHARLIE KIRKDIDWASHAVEARESPECTFULDIALOGUEWITHPEOPLEHEDISAGREEDWITH
Rich people plan for three generations.
Poor people plan for Saturday night.
~ Gloria Steinem
Every day we make choices:
Choices that build strength,
Choices that bring peace,
Choices that grow our mind,
Choices that power our body,
Choices that connect,
Choices that disconnect.
Because how we feel tomorrow
starts with what we do today.
~ London Fitness Guy
I’m killing time while I wait for life to shower me with meaning and happiness.
I have a picturePinned to my wallAn image of you and of me and we're laughing, we're loving it allBut look at our life nowAll tattered and tornWe fuss and we fight and delight in the tears that we cry until dawnHold me nowWarm my heartStay with meLet lovin' start,Let lovin' start
You say I'm a dreamerWe're two of a kindBoth of us searching for some perfect world we know we'll never findSo, perhaps I should leave hereYeah, yeah, and go far awayBut you know that there's nowhere that I'd rather be than with you here today
Hold me nowWarm my heartStay with meLet lovin' start,Let lovin' startYou ask if I love youWell, what can I say?You know that I do and that this is just one of those games that we playSo, I'll sing you a new songPlease don't cry anymoreI'll even ask your forgiveness, though I don't know just what I'm asking it forHold me nowWarm my heartStay with meLet lovin' start,Let lovin' start
The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit.
The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.
You can't go back and change the beginning,but you can start where you are and change the ending.
An entire sea of water can't sink a ship unless it gets inside the ship.
Similarly, the negativity of the world can't put you down unless you allow it to get inside you.
~ found on the interwebs
We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.
