Bryan

“Even extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in violence - but more generally takes the form of apathy...”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest source of human happiness; but he whose life has passed without contest, and who can boast neither success nor merit, can survey himself only as a useless filler of existence”
― Samuel Johnson

“The impulse to laugh at healthy people who nonetheless fall down is by no means universal, however, was brought to my attention unpleasantly at a performance of Swan Lake by the Royal Ballet in London, England. I was in the audience with my daughter Nanny, who was about sixteen then. She is forty-one now, in the summer of 1996. That must have been twenty-five years ago now!
A ballerina, dancing on her toes, went deedly-deedly-deedly into the wings as she was supposed to do. But then there was a sound backstage as though she had put her foot in a bucket and then gone down an iron stairway with her foot still in the bucket.
I instantly laughed like hell.
I was the only person to do so.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Timequake

“That person then, whoever it may be, whose mind is quiet through consistency and self control, who finds contentment in himself, who neither breaks down in adversity nor crumbles in fright, nor burns with any thirsty need nor dissolves into wild and futile excitement, that person is the wise one we are seeking, and that person is happy”
― Cicero