Inspirational Quotes 58

Looks don't matter

I wish common sense was more common. (@BarryNSmith79)

 I get more done by being pleasant, respecting others and candour than implementing any of the crap "management" books tell you to do. (Scarlet Wilde)

“Better-looking people really are happier. There is no question about that. As well as all the other direct effects, such as increased income and improving success in the marriage market, it also makes you happier, because you also feel better about yourself.” (Professor Hammermesh, author of Beauty Pays: Why Attractive People are More Successful)

A young woman I know who works for a media company has just been taken to one side by her boss and told that although her work is entirely satisfactory, there is a problem. She doesn’t chat enough… If you don’t talk, people don’t like you much. My young acquaintance tells me she is now putting aside small amounts of time every day for dedicated chatter. She now treats talk as a type of work, and does it with the same conscientiousness she does everything. (ft.com Feb 2014)

It’s not just that Mormons have developed a “pioneer spirit” or that they believe that they can receive divine revelations, as Triple Package would have us believe. It’s more that the first Mormons started with enough money to buy a great deal of land in Missouri and Illinois. They then migrated to Utah, where Brigham Young and his followers essentially stole land from the Shoshone and Ute tribes, refusing to pay what the tribes demanded, and petitioning for the government to remove them. Beyond thousands of acres of free land, early political control over Utah was helpful. (Slate.com on The Triple Package by Amy Chua and Jed Rosenfeld)

A book like The Triple Package, even if it takes pains to argue in non-racial terms, is an example of this sort of ethnocentric thinking writ large. And it is only the latest in a long line of books – spanning more than a century – arguing for the superiority of this or that American group over others. The roots of alleged superiority have changed over time from race to class to IQ to religion and now to culture. (Suketu Mehta, Time, Jan 2014)


It’s not about being judged on how you look, it’s about presentation, getting a job and finding a partner. (Presenter of My Tattoo Hell on BBC Breakfast, January 28, 2014 So it’s about being judged on how you look, then? It's a bit it like saying “we don’t have a class system any more, it has completely disappeared, but people are still terribly snobbish about what you eat, where you go on holiday and how you decorate your house.”)

Greenwich Village “became a sleazy theme park of itself.” (Maria Muldaur, Jan 2014)

I am from the 1950s. I like conversation and then I like going to bed early and then I like getting up and sitting with a family around breakfast. And I like singing and I like dancing and I like sitting in a garden and I like reading a book and – I dunno, is that old-fashioned? I think I am a product of my age and my upbringing. (Peter Mandelson July 11 10)

That’s another kind of conversation that many women engage in which baffles many men: talk about details of their daily lives, like the sweater they found on sale — details, you might say, as insignificant as those about last night’s ballgame which can baffle women when they overhear men talking. These seemingly pointless conversations are as comforting to some women as “troubles talk” conversations are to others. So maybe it’s true that talk is the reason having a sister makes you happier, but it needn’t be talk about emotions. (NYTimes)

Words of wisdom from an elder in the office: "People generally need three things in life. A mentor. A scapegoat. And someone to hate." (@CharlesCumming)

His existing dilemma is one that is rarely discussed: when do artists cut their losses and abandon their careers? (Guardian review of “failing folk singer” tale Inside Llewellyn Davies, Jan 2014)

Every age invents its own past. (Guardian Jan 2014)

Robbie Coltrane had been thumped about by his dad until the day he was big enough to thump him back. (Guardian Jan 2014 So much for “violence never solved anything”, “ignore bullies” – even “personality is more important than looks” - and even “size doesn’t matter”!)

More here, and links to the rest.