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

“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

“One of Wordsworth’s poetic ambitions was to induce us to see the many animals living alongside us that we typically ignore, registering them only out of the corner of our eyes and feeling no appreciation for what they are up to and want: shadowy, generic presences such as the bird up on the steeple and the rustling creature in the bush. He invited his readers to abandon their usual perspectives and to consider for a time how the world might look through other eyes, to shuttle between the human and the natural perspective. Why might this be interesting, or even inspiring? Perhaps because unhappiness can stem from having only one perspective to play with.”
― 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