Vocabulary
Flaneur

A person who strolls through the city often observing life and their surroundings with curiosity and without a specific purpose.
Mountebank

a person who deceives others, especially in order to trick them out of their money; a charlatan.
Polymath

an individual whose knowledge spans many different subjects, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems
Epic

Use e.g. he lacked that level of physical wit, physical improvisation, and epic, his story was a good one... .
Kenson

Self deprivation (Japanese)
Fluffle

Bunnies
Convocation

Eagles
Probity

the quality of having strong moral principles; honesty and decency.
Committee

Vultures
Baader-Meinhof

The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is a cognitive bias that causes people to notice something more often after they become aware of it. It's also kno
Extant

(especially of a document) still in existence; surviving. "the original manuscript is no longer extant"
Flush

Mallards
Murmuration

Starlings
Parliament

Owls
Apostacy

the total rejection of Christianity by a baptized person who, having at one time professed the Christian faith, publicly rejects it.
Tautology

The saying of the same thing twice in different words
Koan

a paradoxical anecdote or riddle used in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment.
Viticulture

the study, production, and practice of cultivating grapes, including the agricultural activities involved in growing them up to the time of harvest. It's a branch of horticulture
Hegelian Dialectic

Refers originally to a dialogue between people holding different ponts of view about a subject but wishing to arrive at the truth through reasoned argumentation. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
Feijoada

Brazil's national dish, is a stew loaded with black beans and meats of every description: smoked pork loin, bacon and sausage such as chorizo.
Peregrinations

A journey, especially a long or meandering one.
Injunction

a judicial order that restrains a person from beginning or continuing an action threatening or invading the legal right of another, or that compels a person to carry out a certain act, e.g., to make restitution to an injured party.
To live is to war with trolls.

- Henrik Ibsen
Occam's Razor

The simplest explanation is usually correct.
Anthropocene

a term used to describe the current period in Earth's history when human activity has had a significant impact on the planet. The term is used in a variety of contexts, including the Earth sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities.
Vituperative

bitter and abusive
Question inflection

the use of a rising pitch at the end of a sentence to indicate a question
Rod of Asclepius

The Rod of Asclepius, also known as the Staff of Aesculapius, is a symbol of medicine and healing that depicts a rod with a single serpent wrapped around it. Re: Greek god Asclepius, who was the deity of medicine and healing. official insignia of the American Medical Association. It is also used by the World Health Organization and the American College of Physicians.
Encomium

a speech or piece of writing that praises someone or something highly.
Ineluctable

unable to be resisted or avoided; inescapable. "the ineluctable facts of history"
Unkindness

Ravens
Eclat

brilliant display or effect.
Scurry

Squirrels
a badling, a brace, a paddling, a plump, or a raft

Ducks
Kaiseki

Multi-course Japanese meal
Wehrmacht

The Wehrmacht was made up of the Heer (army), the Kriegsmarine (navy), and the Luftwaffe (air force). The term "Wehrmacht" is German for "defense force".
caisson

Military: A chest or wagon used to carry ammunition or to transport the casket of a fallen military member. The casket is carried in a horse-drawn caisson.
Recrudesence

The renewal or reappearance of something, especially something dangerous or unhealthy. The return of something terrible after a time of reprieve.
Cloud

Bats (in flight)
Metacognition

An awareness that you don't know everything is often called "metacognition"; it essentially means "thinking about thinking" and includes the ability to recognize your own knowledge gaps and limitations
noblesse oblige

French phrase that means "nobility obligates". It's used to describe the idea that people of high social rank or wealth have a responsibility to help others.
Man is so intelligent that he feels impelled to invent theories to account for what happens in the world. Unfortunately, he is not quite intelligent enough, in most cases, to find correct explanations. So that when he acts on his theories, he behaves very often like a lunatic.

- Aldous Huxley
Instead of fighting the world, kill your ego.

- Rumi
Good artists copy; great artists steal

- Pablo Picasso
Elided

(of a sound or syllable) omitted when speaking. "elided consonants"
Remonstrance

An earnest expression of opposition or protest, a formal presentation.
Recursive Self Improvement

AI ability to correct its own coding
Voussoir

Wegde shaped block used in construction of roman arch.
Apricity

The warmth of sun in winter
Oshibori

Hot hand towels, Japanese
Diffident

modest or shy because of a lack of self-confidence.
Internecine

destructive to both sides in a conflict.
Business

Ferrets
Disposessed

deprive (someone) of land, property, or other possessions.
Ken

one's range of knowledge or sight.
Sugo

Omakase

a meal consisting of dishes selected by the chef.
catafalque

a decorated wooden framework supporting the coffin of a distinguished person during a funeral or while lying in state.
misology

Misology is a noun that means a hatred of reasoning, argument, or enlightenment.
Empathy

...only came into popular use in the early twentieth century to describe the imaginative act of projecting oneself into a work of art in an effort to understand why art moves us
Confusion

Weasels

InterReference.com

Wednesday, August 27, 2025

Quote
As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

- Carl Jung
He who cannot obey himself will be commanded.

- Friedrich Nietzsche
It is hard to understand yourself properly since something that you might be doing out of generosity and goodness is the same as you might be doing out of cowardice and indifference.

- Ludwig Wittgenstein
Motivation is not the cause of action, it's the by-product of action.

- John L. Maxwell
Your brain is an asshole.

Pete Holmes
Quod Obstat Via Fit - The obstacle is the way.

- Marcus Aurelius
How you love, how you give, and how you suffer is just about the sum of who you are. Everything in life is a subset of one or a combinatorial function of all three. Seek people who love and give generously, who have the strength to suffer without causing damage. Seek to be such a person.

My father used to say: 'Don't raise your voice, improve your argument.'

- Desmond Tutu
With despair, true optimism begins: the optimism of a man who expects nothing, who knows he has no rights and nothing coming to him, who rejoices in counting on himself alone and in acting alone for the good of all.

- Jean-Paul Sartre
Progress is never permanent, will always be threatened, must be redoubled, restated and reimagined if it is to survive.

- Zadie Smith
Self discipline begins with the mastery of your thoughts. If you don't control what you think, you can't control what you do.

Reality cannot be ignored, except at a price; and the longer the ignorance is persisted in, the higher and more terrible becomes the price that must be paid.

- Aldous Huxley
Anybody can do something once and a while but to be consistent in what you do is a big difference. It's what you do consistently not occasionally that makes the difference.

To the intelligent man or woman, life appears infinitely mysterious. But the stupid have an answer to every question.

- Edward Abbey
11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

1 Corinthians 13:11
Even top-ranked tennis players win barely more than half of the points they play.

- Roger Federer
Care about what other people think, and you will always be their prisoner.

- Lao Tzu
All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed them must rely exclusively on force.

- George Orwell
Listening is not simply hearing the words that are spoken. Listening is understanding why the words were spoken.

- Simon Sinek
Weak people revenge. Strong people forgive. Intelligent people ignore.

- Albert Einstein
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.

- Marcus Aurelius
The unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwelling on himself and start paying attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self indulgence. When you're unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. You get to take yourself oh so very seriously.

- Tom Robbins
What fresh hell is this?

Dorothy Parker - Dorthy Parker
I have no other self than the totality of things of which I am aware.

- Alan Watts
There is no way to happiness - happiness is the way.

- Thick Nhat Hanh
He suffers unnecessarily, who suffers before it is necessary

Seneca
Your comfort zone is the prison you built to protect yourself from growth.

The happy man is satisfied with his present situation, no matter what it is.

- Seneca
The greatest difficulty is the mental resistance to things that arise, and the underlying assumption that they should not.

- Eckhart Tolle
Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

- Anton Chekhov
Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar.

The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it.

- Carl Jung
Never seek revenge. Rotten fruit will fall by itself.

We learn from history that we don't learn from history.

- Hegel
The art of knowing is knowing what to ignore.

- Rumi
...suffer in the right direction.

You're in charge of not letting people get to you. They can't pull the trigger if you don't give them the gun.

Look at your habits . . . are they the product of innumerable little cowardices and lazinesses or of your courage and inventive reason?

- Friedrich Nietzsche
Today I escaped anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions, not outside.

Marcus Aurelius
It was not the truth they wanted, but an illusion they could bear to live with.

- Anais Nin
At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.

- Frida Kahlo
Unconditional Positive Regard

- Carl Rogers
You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you cannot control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone.

Marcus Aurelius
open

Hell is other people,

- Jean-Paul Sartre
To be truly radical is to make hope possible...

- Raymond Williams
"So what, no fucking ziti now!?"

Sopranos 1999
To ask the right question is already half the solution of a problem.

- Carl Jung
What you feel is wrong or missing in your relationship is an indication that something is amiss within you.

- Wayne Dyer
Courage is knowing it might hurt, and doing it anyway. Stupidity is the same. And that's why life is hard.

- Jeremy Goldberg
What is the secret of your serenity? Said the Master "Wholehearted cooperation with the inevitable."

- Anthony de Mello
Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment.

- Robert Benchley
The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.

- Dante Alighieri
Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.

- Leo Tolstoy
Nothing can provoke one's anger if one does not add to one's pile of troubles by getting angry.

Seneca
The cure for the pain is in the pain.

- Rumi
I am certain there is too much certainty in the world.

- Michael Crichton
The world is violent and mercurial - it will have its way with you. We are saved only by love - love for each other and the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share: being a parent; being a writer; being a painter; being a friend. We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must same from it, all the time, is love.

- Tennessee Williams
You have to let other people be right... it consoles them for not being anything else.

Andre Gide
All the goodness and the heroism will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up. It isn't that evil things win - it never will - but that it doesn't die.

- John Steinbeck
“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.”

William James
Wage Peace

Former President Jimmy Carter's Funeral, Carter's grandson
Then I realized something. I was keeping my old wounds fresh and open, as evidence for a trial that would never come.

- Mark Nepo
Always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

- Elie Wiesel
If a person gave away your body to some passerby you’d be furious. Yet you handover your mind to anyone who comes along, so they may abuse you, leaving it disturbed and troubled—have you no shame in that?

- Epictetus
“Pay attention to what you’re thinking about. You are drawing in what you’re constantly dwelling on. Your thoughts are running your life. Is what you’re thinking about what you want?...”

Joel Osteen
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

- Aldous Huxley
Knowing your own darkness is the best way of dealing with the darkness of other people.

- Carl Jung
Observe and learn instead of react and respond. Everything doesn't need your reaction. Conserve your energy for what matters.

Always forgive your enemies, nothing annoys them so much.

- Oscar Wilde
If you think there's a solution you're part of the problem, that's what I believe.

- George Carlin
Excuses make today easy, but they make tomorrow hard. Discipline makes today hard, but it makes tomorrow easy.

What should each of us say to every trial we face? This is what I've trained for, for this is my discipline!

- Epictetus
I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, "If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."

- Kurt Vonnegut
A sign of intelligence is an awareness of one's own ignorance.

- Niccolo Machiavelli
The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places.

- Earnest Hemingway
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

- Ludwig Wittgenstein
Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own unguarded thoughts.

The Buddha
Everything doesn't need your energy, your reaction or your response. Protect yourself.

The language of society is conformity: the language of the creative individual is freedom. Life will continue to be a hell as long as the people who make up the world shut their eyes to reality.

- Henry Miller
No feeling is final.

- Rainer Maria Rilke
Anything that is concealed is a secret. The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates their possessor from the community.

- Carl Jung
We will become our opposite if we do not learn to accommodate the opposition within us.

- Carl Jung
Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth - more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; thought is merciless to privilege, established intitutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, carless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid.

- Bertrand Russell
Evil people need stupid people to do their work for them

Dietrich Bonfoffer
Being aware of the sound of a bell does not mean the bell belongs to you. Likewise, being aware of your thoughts does not mean the thoughts belong to you.

Wu Hsin
Boredom, anger, sadness, or grief are not 'yours,' not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go. Nothing that comes and goes is you.

- Eckhart Tolle
Resist loss of the miraculous by lowering your standards for what constitutes a miracle. It is all a fucking miracle.

- Louise Erdrich
Eisenhower (1950s) Operation "Wetback", 1.1 million Mexicans expelled

- Viktor Shvets
Be the person who breaks the cycle. If you were judged, choose understanding. If you were rejected, choose acceptance. if you were shamed, choose compassion. Be the person you needed when you were hurting, not the person who hurt you. Vow to be better than what broke you - to heal instead of becoming bitter so you can act from your heart, not your pain.

- Lori Deschene
Surrender is the simple but profound wisdom of yielding to rather than opposing the flow of life.

- Eckhart Tolle
"A love affair has to do with immediate personal satisfaction. But marriage is an ordeal; it means yielding, time and again. That’s why it’s a sacrament: you give up your personal simplicity to participate in a relationship. And when you’re giving, you’re not giving to the other person: you’re giving to the relationship.

Joseph Campbell
All cruelty springs from weakness.

- Seneca
Who needs these thoughts?

As Good As It Gets / Helen Hunt
The single most vital step...is to learn to disidentify with your mind.

- Eckhart Tolle
Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.

- Margaret Atwood
It's not about feeling better, it's about getting better at feeling.

- Gabor Mate
The foundation of all mental illness is the unwillingness to experience legitimate suffering.

- Carl Jung
Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.

- Epictetus
It's 'you' vs 'you' every single day.

We undervalue health if we have not recently experienced illness. We undervalue wealth if we have not recently experienced poverty. We undervalue kindness if we have not recently experienced cruelty. What might you be undervaluing right now?

- James Clear
Your mind is an instrument, a tool. It is there to be used for a specific task, and when the task is completed, you lay it down.

- Eckhart Tolle
Don't expect to be motivated every day to get out there and make it happen. You won't be. Don't count on motivation. Count on discipline.

- Joko Willinik
We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret.

- Jim Rohn
A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness.

- Jean Genet
Observe your thoughts, don't believe them.

- Eckhart Tolle
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

- Thomas Edison
Leave your front door and your back door open. Allow your thoughts to come and go. Just don't serve them tea.

Shunryu Suzuki
You can only fight the way you practice.

- Miyamoto Musashi
Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled.

- Michael Crichton
. . . tyranny of completion . . .

- Adam Phillips
When you're dead, you don't know you're dead. The pain if felt by others. The same thing happens when you're stupid.

The wound is the place where the light enters you.

- Rumi
Feel the feeling but don't become the emotion. Witness it. Allow it. Release it.

Who then is invincible? The one who cannot be upset by anything outside their reasoned choice.

- Epictetus
The ordinary man is the curse of civilization.

- John Fowles
Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth. and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge of what it is not.

- Carl Jung
It is essential that we not respond impulsively...take a moment before reacting, and you will find it is easier to maintain control.

- Epictetus
You are not your thoughts, you are the observer of and intelligence behind your thoughts. When you understand this, you are operating from higher consciousness.

- Jiddu Krishnamurti
Every act of courage is the work of an unbalanced man. Animals, normally by definition, are always cowardly except when they know themselves to be stronger, which is cowardice itself.

- Emil Cioran
It takes two years to learn to speak and sixty to learn to keep quiet.

- Earnest Hemingway
Excessive thought...often creates scenarios of things going wrong that are not happening now, may never happen, and often probably will never happen.

- Eckhart Tolle
I should be suspicious of what I want.

- Rumi
Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance.

- James Baldwin
Daily pick up your cross.

- Luke
Almost everybody is born a genius and buried an idiot.

- Charles Bukowski
You're never ready for what you have to do. You just do it. That makes you ready.

- Flora Rheta Schreiber
Love forgives many mistakes, while hatred imagines mistakes where they do not exist.

- St. John Chrysostom
A man is about as big as the things that make him angry.

- Winston Churchill
The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.

- Jiddu Krishnamurti
If you're going through hell, keep going.

- Winston Churchill
The misuse of language induces evil in the soul.

- Socrates
You don't have to attend every argument you're invited to.

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

- Friedrich Nietzsche
The goal of meditation is not to control your thoughts, it's to stop letting them control you.

Whenever the conscious and animal personality is in conflice with the inner process of growth, it suffers crucifixion.

- Carl Jung
No man is free who is not master of himself.

- Epictetus
When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.

- Oscar Wilde
The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.

- Marcus Aurelius
No man is free who is not master of himself.

- Epictetus
Contentment is natural wealth; luxury is artificial poverty.

- Socrates
Well-being is realized by small steps, but is truly no small thing.

- Zeno
It's not things that upset us but our judgements about things.

- Epictetus
The best answer to anger is silence.

- Marcus Aurelius
CHIPS Act (2022) - 80% to red (Republican) states

Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS)
Every fragment of self-talk is a little story in the head that goes around, and then you look at reality through the lens of the little story.

- Eckhart Tolle
IRA (2022) Reduce deficit, cost of prescriptions, promote clean energy spending

Inflation Reduction Act - Viktor Shvets
Noticing is a practice. Meditation begins with noticing each breath. Mindfulness begins with noticing change. Gratitude begins with noticing good.

- Omar Brownson
When an unpleasant feeling, physical or mental, arises in him, the wise man... is aware that it is only a feeling. he knows that he is not that feeling, and he is not caught by the feeling. Therefore, the pain cannot bind him.

- Thick Nhat Hanh
Your mistakes can also lead you to the truth.

- Rumi
If you think someone has ruined your life, you're right. It's you.

- Friedrich Nietzsche
Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.

- Zig Ziglar
The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.

- Carl Jung
Just be yourself. Nobody fucking likes you anyway.

An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a person's main task in life - becoming a better person.

- Leo Tolstoy
I must go home periodically to renew my sense of horror.

- Carson McCullers
If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do. If some one maintains that two and two are five, or that Iceland is on the equator, you should feel pity rather than anger, unless you know so little of arithmetic or geography that his opinion shakes your own contrary conviction. The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic ther is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion. So whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief the evidence warrants.

- Bertrand Russell
I used to feel like my side of the story needed to be told to keep the facts straight. Now I don't mind what people choose to believe.

The road to hell is not paved with good intentions. It is paved with lack of intention.

- Gabor Mate
We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.

- Charles Bukowski
Observe your thoughts, don't believe them.

- Eckhart Tolle
Negative energy is wasted energy.

- Roger Federer
I've always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative.

- Sugar Ray Robinson
One of the most persistent of all delusions is the conviction that the source of our dissatisfaction lies outside ourselves.

B. Alan Wallace
Receive without pride, let go without attachment.

- Marcus Aurelius
To find fault is easy; to do better may be difficult

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.

- Albert Camus
Nothing seems more conformist or more servile to me these days than the hackneyed mythology of 'revolt'.

- Rene Girard
Motivation is crap. Motivation comes and goes. When you are driven, whatever is in front of you will get destroyed.

- David Goggins
I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and the willingness to remain vulnerable. All these and other factors combined, if the circumstances are right, can teach and lead to rebirth.

- Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

Pain is compulsory. Suffering is optional.

The Buddha
Nobody can fall so low unless he has a great depth. If such a thing can happen to a man, it challenges his best and highest on the other side; that is to say, this depth corresponds to a potential height, and the blackest darkness to a hidden light.

- Carl Jung
Joy comes to us from whom we love even when they are absent.

- Seneca
If you want to escape the burdens that oppress you, you should not be somewhere else, but someone else.

Seneca
One, to a some degree, creates their own reality with their own thoughts. Be careful what you think about. Steer your thoughts, to the degree possible, towards the positive rather than negative.

Just be an observer of your thouggts. You are the one who observes, not what is observed.

The Buddha
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