Jignesh Darji

“Curiosity might be pictured as being made up of chains of small questions extending outwards, sometimes over huge distances, from a central hub composed of a few blunt, large questions. In childhood we ask, ‘Why is there good and evil?’ ‘How does nature work?’ ‘Why am I me?’ If circumstances and temperament allow, we then build on these questions during adulthood, our curiosity encompassing more and more of the world until at some point we may reach that elusive stage where we are bored by nothing. The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones. We end up wondering about flies on the sides of mountains or about a particular fresco on the wall of a sixteenth-century palace. We start to care about the foreign policy of a long-dead Iberian monarch or about the role of peat in the Thirty Years’ War.”
― Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel

“If the world seems unfair or beyond our understanding, sublime places suggest that it is not surprising that things should be thus. We are the playthings of the forces that laid out the oceans and chiselled the mountains. Sublime places gently move us to acknowledge limitations that we might otherwise encounter with anxiety or anger in the ordinary flow of events. It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming. But it is the vast spaces of nature that perhaps provide us with the finest, the most respectful reminder of all that exceeds us. If we spend time in them, they may help us to accept more graciously the great, unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust.”
― Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel

“(Romans in the age of the Caesars believed that putting on the right shoe before the left brought prosperity and good luck.)”
― Phil Knight, Shoe Dog

“Pebbles of Perception The pebbles of perception; With poise and grace, accept what is, life’s sharp embrace. The pebbles of perception; Last to speak, seek better questions, to create, not critique. The pebbles of perception; Choose their response, and cherish the choice, of needs, not wants. The pebbles of perception; Seldom seek credit, self-aware, not self-absorbed, and never big-headed. The pebbles of perception; With enthusiastic wonder, forge their character, without going under. The pebbles of perception; Come what season, gently round out, the rocks of reason. And in the end; Soft sand beneath the feet of children playing.”
― Laurence Endersen, Pebbles of Perception: How a Few Good Choices Make All The Difference