Trevor

“Nicotine, in fact, is an unusual drug because it does very little except trigger compulsive use. According to researcher Roland R. Griffiths, PhD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, “When you give people nicotine for the first time, most people don’t like it. It’s different from many other addictive drugs, for which most people say they enjoy the first experience and would try it again.” Nicotine doesn’t make you high like marijuana or intoxicated like alcohol or wired up like speed. Some people say it makes them feel more relaxed or more alert, but really, the main thing it does is relieve cravings for itself. It’s the perfect circle. The only point of smoking cigarettes is to get addicted so one can experience the pleasure of relieving the unpleasant feeling of craving, like a man who carries around a rock all day because it feels so good when he puts it down.”
― Daniel Z. Lieberman, The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity―and Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race

“He broke my heart. You merely broke my life.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Caretake this moment. Immerse yourself in its particulars. Respond to this person, this challenge, this deed. Quit the evasions. Stop giving yourself needless trouble. It is time to really live; to fully inhabit the situation you happen to be in now. You are not some disinterested bystander. Participate. Exert yourself. Respect your partnership with providence. Ask yourself often, How may I perform this particular deed such that it would be consistent with and acceptable to the divine will? Heed the answer and get to work. When your doors are shut and your room is dark, you are not alone. The will of nature is within you as your natural genius is within. Listen to its importunings. Follow its directives. As concerns the art of living, the material is your own life. No great thing is created suddenly. There must be time. Give your best and always be kind.”
― Epictetus, The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness

“Concentrate every minute like a Roman— like a man— on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can— if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered , irritable. You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life? If you can manage this, that’s all even the gods can ask of you.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations