Be boring and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.
-- Gustave Flaubert
Excellence is Habbit
Happiness
Happiness is associated with being passionate about something.
-- George Plimpton
Boredom
The killer and the bore are both marked by their fatal agbsence of empathy with the other person, their chilling dullness and mediocrity, and a thirst for power and attention that conceals their despair at having nothing to offer.
-- Phil Baker
Taste and Microsoft
The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste, they have absolutely no taste, and what that means is - I don't mean that in a small way I mean that in a big way. In the sense that they they don't think of original ideas and they don't bring much culture into their product, and you say why is that important - well you know proportionally spaced fonts come from type setting and beautiful books, that's where one gets the idea - if it weren't for the Mac they would never have that in their products and, so I guess I am saddened, not by Microsoft's success - I have no problem with their success, they've earned their success for the most part. I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third rate products.
-- Steve Jobs
Taste
Taste is the only morality. Tell me what you like and I'll tell you who you are. A thing is worth precisely what it can do for you, not what you choose to pay for it.
-- John Ruskin
Boldness
Until there is commitment there is hesitancey, the chance to draw back. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sort of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Work
Work is love made visible
-- Khalil Gibran
Politeness
Red rabbits who had lived for decades in close quarters placed a high value on politeness, and impressed that on their offspring.
-- Moving Mars, Greg Bear
Nothingness
To be nothingness is to possess the world.