Mehtavinay1

“E xternal nature is only internal nature writ large”
― Swami Vivekananda, Inspiring Thoughts

“It was his beauty that had ruined him, his beauty and the youth that he had prayed for. But for those two things, his life might have been free from stain. His beauty had been to him but a mask, his youth but a mockery. What was youth at best? A green, an unripe time, a time of shallow moods, and sickly thoughts. Why had he worn its livery? Youth had spoiled him.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“But the clown whom he had seen last year with Milly at the circus – that clown was permanent, for his act never changed. That was the way to live; the clown was unaffected by the vagaries of public men and the enormous discoveries of the great. Wormold began to make faces in the glass. ‘What on earth are you doing, Father?’ ‘I wanted to make myself laugh.’ Milly giggled. ‘I thought you were being sad and serious.’ ‘That’s why I wanted to laugh. Do you remember the clown last year, Milly?’ ‘He walked off the end of a ladder and fell in a bucket of whitewash.’ ‘He falls in it every night at ten o’clock. We should all be clowns, Milly. Don’t ever learn from experience.’ ‘Reverend Mother says …’ ‘Don’t pay any attention to her. God doesn’t learn from experience, does He, or how could He hope anything of man? It’s the scientists who add the digits and make the same sum who cause the trouble. Newton discovering gravity – he learned from experience and after that …’ ‘I thought it was from an apple.’ ‘It’s the same thing. It was only a matter of time before Lord Rutherford went and split the atom. He had learned from experience too, and so did the men of Hiroshima. If only we had been born clowns, nothing bad would happen to us except a few bruises and a smear of whitewash. Don’t learn from experience, Milly. It ruins our peace and our lives.”
― Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana

“Once the game is finished and you try to learn from the results, separating the quality of your decisions from the influence of luck is difficult.”
― Annie Duke, Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts