Chris

“The surest way to keep a secret is to make someone think they already know the answer.”
― Frank Herbert, Heretics of Dune

“Do you remember what Darwin says about music? He claims that the power of producing and appreciating it existed among the human race long before the power of speech was arrived at. Perhaps that is why we are so subtly influenced by it. There are vague memories in our souls of those misty centuries when the world was in its childhood.'
That's a rather broad idea,' I remarked.
One's ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature,' he answered.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet

“Something about disconnecting from one’s sense of self even briefly, about glimpsing oneself as belonging to a greater whole, seems profoundly and persistently comforting to most people who experience it.”
― Alex Lickerman, The Undefeated Mind: On the Science of Constructing an Indestructible Self

“We may rarely get feedback from the people around us about how meaningfully we’ve influenced their lives for the better, and even less often how they then may have gone on, as a direct result of our influence, to influence the lives of still others. But there’s little doubt this effect is real and frequently significant. The small kind word we leave with a stranger who we’ll never see again may not just spread out like ripples on a pond but may strike with the force of a tidal wave. We just never know. ”
― Alex Lickerman, The Undefeated Mind: On the Science of Constructing an Indestructible Self