pjthompson | Entries tagged with ego

Random quote of the day:

“To give up our imaginary position as the center, to renounce it, not only intellectually but in the imaginative part of our soul, that means to awaken to what is real and eternal, to see the true light and hear the true silence.”

―Simone Weil, Waiting for God

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Bert and Ernie, Celine Dion, or the Band of the Coldstream Guards. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“We too often coerce [dreams] with interpretation, drag them into too harsh a light, and harness them to the ego in order to strengthen its perspective. No wonder we forget dreams—they resist recollection because they do not wish to be pressed into the ego's service, to be literalized and, alas, demonized.

—Patrick Harper, Daimonic Reality

Random quote of the day:

“The biggest barrier to writing well and doing anything well is self-importance; it’s blinding. Self-importance blinds people to life.”

—Jim Harrison, interview, Grand Rapids Magazine, May 1998

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Desus and Mero, Beyoncé, or the Marine Corps Marching Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“The sin of the ego is to wish to sever itself from its own source; its tragedy is that it sometimes succeeds.”

—Patrick Harpur, The Philosophers’ Secret Fire

Random quote of the day:

“The man who renounces himself, comes to himself.”

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, “An Address Delivered Before the Senior Class in Divinity College, Cambridge, Sunday Evening, July 15, 1838”

Random quote of the day:

“The ego has convinced us that we need it—not only that we need it, but that we are it.”

—Ram Dass, “Navigating the Matrix of the Ego,” Ramdass.org

Random quote of the day:

“It astounds us to come upon other egoists, as though we alone had the right to be selfish, and be filled with eagerness to live.”

—Jules Renard, The Journal of Jules Renard, 1887 (tr. Louise Bogan and Elizabeth Roget)

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Key and Peele, Celine Dion, or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“No man thinks there is much ado about nothing when the ado is about himself.”

—Anthony Trollope, The Bertrams

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Laurel and Hardy, Ariana Grande, or the Salvation Army Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“The ego is a monkey catapulting through the jungle: fascinated by the realm of the senses it swings from one desire to the next.”

—Lao Tzu, Hua Hu Ching, Verse 10 (tr. Brian Walker)

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

It seems this notebook I just finished using up is emblematic of my life: the spiral binding had gotten crushed at one point so it was impossible to turn the page without tearing it at the top but I persisted in using it to the very last page.

Ego is a necessary thing if we’re going to get anything done in this world, but oh the damage it can do if left unchecked. It’s a life’s work striking the balance between, the razor’s edge.

Old age is really the harvest of all we have ever been or known or done, for good or ill. So be mindful of what you gather around you in your youth and middle-age.

When it comes to pilgrimage, the destination is not the important thing, the prize at the end of the journey is not the important thing. The important thing is walking the walk.

Patience may be the hardest part of any artistic endeavor. “Why aren’t I good enough yet?” “Why isn’t this getting easier?” “Why can’t I break in?” “Are we there yet?” As my wise friend, L., says: “At the end of the day you realize that doing this [art] is the only sane alternative. Patience is the life-saver.”

Emperors are all sociopaths. When they give up their sociopathic ways and become soft they are overthrown.

Random quote of the day:

“One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.”

—G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

1. Let me Thread you a story…(1-18)
2. We're just a little town. Don't go in much for big and showy, but we had us a fella once who liked to write his name everywhere in town.
3. Wasn't a building or a fence or a bench or a sidewalk safe from his red spray can. "Huge, Huge, Huge" it said everywhere.
4. Natty Knowles spent all his time scrubbing it off things & the town shelled out so much money for it they finally confronted Freddy Huge.
5. Said they were going to make him pay all the expenses. At first, Freddy tried to blame one of the Syrian refugee families in town.
6. But everyone knew Ahmed Shah was a hard-working man who just wanted to raise his family in a safe, peaceful place.
7. And his wife, Halimah, was busy raising their two boys, Idris and Harun, 4 and 3, respectively.
8. Besides, she was eight months pregnant at the time with their daughter, Bilqis, and everyone knew she couldn’t be doing it.
9. Besides, Minnie Halverson, head of the Beale Street Neighborhood Watch was on stakeout one night and saw what happened.
10. Freddy would never dirty his own hands with anything like real work, but his Russian accountant, Ivan Drago, was up for the job.
11. Minnie literally caught him red-handed as the spray paint leaked back over his fingers some.
12. Faced with this evidence and a huge bill from the city, Freddy and Ivan declared bankruptcy.
13. They snuck out of town one night and folks hear tell they set up shop in New Jersey where waste management is a…big industry.
14. Sad to say they left the shareholders at Huge Waste Management holding the bag, and people lost badly needed jobs.
15. Like I’ve said before, we take care of our own in this town. Mayor Begay formed a city waste management firm.
16. The shareholders were happy to buy into that, folks kept their jobs, and we saw no more red spray paint around town.
17. Meanwhile, Freddy and his Russian contact are growing wealthy. Hear tell they’ve opened a university for the waste management business.
18. Naturally, it’s called Huge Waste University.

This tale can also be found on Twitter @downportalville.

You can read the entire Portalville saga (so far) at https://pjthompson.dreamwidth.org/1672524.html

Random quote of the day:

“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment intuition.”

—Rumi, Masnavi, Book IV, Story II, (tr. Edward Henry Whinfield)

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Lucy and Ethel, Justin Bieber, or the Kardashian Klan. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

“Having perfected our disguise, we spend our lives searching for someone we don’t fool.”

—Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

“Having perfected our disguise, we spend our lives searching for someone we don’t fool.”

—Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

“Many of our pains could be summed up as: problems of the unrecognized ego in an indifferent world.”

—Alain de Botton, Twitterfeed, January 14, 2012

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

When we get out of the glass bottles of our own ego,
and when we escape like squirrels from turning in the cages of our personality
and get into the forest again,
we shall shiver with cold and fright
but things will happen to us
so that we don’t know ourselves.

Cool, unlying life will rush in,
and passion will make our bodies taut with power,
we shall stamp our feet with new power
and old things will fall down,
we shall laugh, and institutions will curl up like burnt paper.

—D.H. Lawrence, “Escape”