A near-synonym is boulevardier

 

“It is only for those without hope that hope is given.”




 

“No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener.”

“A Klee painting named 'Angelus Novus' shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.”

 

“There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism.”

“In the end, we get older, we kill everyone who loves us through the worries we give them, through the troubled tenderness we inspire in them, and the fears we ceaselessly cause.”

  Walter Benjamin

On Ugliness

 

“Beauty is, in some ways, boring. Even if its concept changes through the ages, nevertheless a beautiful object must always follow certain rules … 

Ugliness is unpredictable and offers an infinite range of possibilities. Beauty is finite. Ugliness is infinite, like God.”

Umberto Eco

To Kill a Mockingbird

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” 

 

“People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.” 

 

“People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.” 

“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” 

 “With him, life was routine; without him, life was unbearable.” 

 

 “It’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you.” 

“There are just some kind of men who-who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.”

Harper Lee

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

“Probability is not a mere computation of odds on the dice or more complicated variants; it is the acceptance of the lack of certainty in our knowledge and the development of methods for dealing with our ignorance.”

 

 

 “Never ask a man if he is from Sparta: If he were, he would have let you know such an important fact - and if he were not, you could hurt his feelings.” 

 

 “When things go our way we reject the lack of certainty.” 

 

 

 “Realism is punishing. Probabilistic skepticism is worse.”

 

 “No matter how sophisticated our choices, how good we are at dominating the odds, randomness will have the last word.” 

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

A Brief History of Time

“The universe doesn't allow perfection.” 

 

 

  

 

“If time travel is possible, where are the tourists from the future?”

 

 

 

 “Ever since the dawn of civilization, people have not been content to see events as unconnected and inexplicable. They have craved an understanding of the underlying order in the world. Today we still yearn to know why we are here and where we came from. Humanity's deepest desire for knowledge is justification enough for our continuing quest. And our goal is nothing less than a complete description of the universe we live in.” 

 

 

“If there really is a complete unified theory that governs everything, it presumably also determines your actions. But it does so in a way that is impossible to calculate for an organism that is as complicated as a human being. The reason we say that humans have free will is because we can't predict what they will do.” 

 

 

“The increase of disorder or entropy is what distinguishes the past from the future, giving a direction to time.” 

Stephen Hawking

Meditations

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”

 

 “You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”

 

  “Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”

  “It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”

“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself in your way of thinking.”

“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.”

 “Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?” 

 Marcus Aurelius