Laura

“The single most valuable human trait, the one quality every schoolchild and adult should be taught to nurture, is, quite simply, kindness.

Kindness. If you prefer, compassion. Even benevolence. It is the quality that makes people lovely. If that sounds rather anaemic, it’s because it is the opposite of setting goals and learning how to persuade and close deals; the antithesis of self-reliance and get-what-you-want thinking which form the backbone of modern self-improvement. Its simplicity and obviousness mean that we forget it constantly when we try to impress people, yet it is the most impressive trait we can ever show. It has nothing to do with intelligence or witty banter. We make the mistake of thinking we have to be funny and clever among the ranks of the funny and clever, or match the more obvious qualities of people we would like to like us, when in fact few of us seek out in others those outward aspects of personality we ourselves emanate.”
― Derren Brown, Confessions of a Conjuror

“The fact is that worth is a matter of opinion, and opinion is informed by culture. And if that culture is as male-biased as ours is, it can’t help but be biased against women. By default.”
― Caroline Criado-Pérez, Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

“How could it be progress when the countryside was being stripped of its life, he wondered. Without successive generations of families keeping their feet on their own land, the countryside would be a dead place - a desert. A thousand efficient machines could never replace the joy and satisfaction that a man drew from hearing the laughter of his children playing in the fields as he tended his finca, no matter how small it might be.”
― Peter Kerr

“Seven days a week we are forced to contend with bleak feelings, thought rarely do we have the time or the will to give them serious consideration.”
― Elif Shafak, How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division