Like all the rest of the world’s warring tribes, these two made their way to New York City and settled side by side. They dwelt in the same neighborhoods and the same narrow cafés, where they could keep a watchful eye on one another. In
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“For the rest of history, for most of us, our bright promise will always fall short of being actualised; it will never earn us bountiful sums of money or beget exemplary objects or organisations....
Most of us stand poised at the edge of brilliance, haunted by the knowledge of our proximity, yet still demonstrably on the wrong side of the line, our dealings with reality undermined by a range of minor yet critical psychological flaws (a little too much optimism, an unprocessed rebelliousness, a fatal impatience or sentimentality). We are like an exquisite high-speed aircraft which for lack of a tiny part is left stranded beside the runway, rendered slower than a tractor or a bicycle.”
― The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
Most of us stand poised at the edge of brilliance, haunted by the knowledge of our proximity, yet still demonstrably on the wrong side of the line, our dealings with reality undermined by a range of minor yet critical psychological flaws (a little too much optimism, an unprocessed rebelliousness, a fatal impatience or sentimentality). We are like an exquisite high-speed aircraft which for lack of a tiny part is left stranded beside the runway, rendered slower than a tractor or a bicycle.”
― The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
“There is something improbably about the silence in the [subway] carriage, considering how naturally gregarious we are as a species. Still, how much kinder it is for the commuters to pretend to be absorbed in other things, rather than revealing the extent to which they are covertly evaluating, judging, condemning and desiring each other. A few venture a glance here and there, as furtively as birds pecking grain. But only if the train crashed would anyone know for sure who else had been in the carriage, what small parts of the nation's economy had been innocuously seated across the aisle just before the impact: employees of hotels, government ministries, plastic-surgery clinics, fruit nurseries and greetings-card companies.”
― The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
― The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
“the moral narcissist’s extreme humility masked a dreadful pride. Ordinary people could accept that they had faults; the moral narcissist could not.”
― Strangers Drowning: Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Urge to Help
― Strangers Drowning: Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Urge to Help
“Logically enough, the office and the nunnery have been singularly popular in the imaginations of pornographers. We should not be surprised to learn that the erotic novels of the early modern period were overwhelmingly focused on debauchery and flagellation amongst clergy in vespers and chapels, just as contemporary Internet pornography is inordinately concerned with fellatios and sodomies performed by office workers against a backdrop of work stations and computer equipment.”
― The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
― The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
“As your perspective of the world increases not only is the pain it inflicts on you less but also its meaning. Understanding the world requires you to take a certain distance from it.”
― My Struggle: Book 1
― My Struggle: Book 1
Global Voices
— 49 members
— last activity Mar 27, 2009 08:00AM
A book club for authors, translators, and editors of Global Voices - https://globalvoices.org
Hewlett Foundation Nonfiction Book Club
— 1 member
— last activity Oct 03, 2016 02:29AM
A low-stakes quarterly book club for books related to the work of the Hewlett Foundation.
David’s 2025 Year in Books
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