#ux

The quasi-peaceable gentleman of leisure, then, not only consumes of the staff of life beyond the minimum required for subsistence and physical efficiency, but his consumption also undergoes a specialisation as regards the quality of the goods consumed. He consumes freely and of the best, in food, drink, narcotics, shelter, services, ornaments, apparel, weapons and accoutrements, amusements, amulets, and idols or divinities. ↗

— Thorstein Veblen

#leisure #luxury #vice #food

Consider yourself. I want you to imagine a scene from your childhood. Pick something evocative... Something you can remember clearly, something you can see, feel, maybe even smell, as if you were really there. After all, you really were there at the time, weren't you? How else would you remember it? But here is the bombshell: you WEREN'T there. Not a single atom that is in your body today was there when that event took place. Every bit of you has been replaced many times over... The point is that you are like a cloud: something that persists over long periods, whilse simultaneously being in flux. Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you. Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made. ↗

— Steve Grand

#clouds #cognition #flux #life #matter

The D.H.C. for Central London always made a point of personally conducting his new students round the various departments. "Just to give you a general idea," hew would explain to them. For of course some soft of general idea they must have, if they were to do their work intelligently - though as little of one, if they were to be good and happy members of society, as possible. For particulars, as every one knows, make for virtue and happiness; generalities are intellectually necessary evils. Not philosophers but fretsawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society. ↗

— Aldous Huxley

#happiness #huxley #society #intelligence

Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only indispensable, but positive hinderances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor. ↗

— Henry David Thoreau

#poor #thoreau #wise #life

It is not a single cowardice that drives us into fiction's fantasies. We often fear that literature is a game we can't afford to play — the product of idleness and immoral ease. In the grip of that feeling it isn't life we pursue, but the point and purpose of life — its facility, its use. ↗

— William H. Gass

#indolence #luxury #purpose #utility #life

Sergei doesn’t yearn for love…he thirsts for domination, and now he has finally achieved it. ↗

— Melika Dannese Lux

#defeat #hopelessness #ilyse-charpentier #melika-dannese-lux #realization

elle ne pensait plus à lui comme le fiancé impossible mais comme à l'époux certain à qui elle se devait tout entière. ↗

— Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

#mari #love

Money can't buy happiness but it'll sure keep a mess of grief off your front porch. ↗

— James Lee Burke

#money

Ah! How contrary are the teachings of Jesus to the feelings of nature! Without the help of His grace it would be impossible not only to put them into practice, but to even understand them. ↗

— St. Therese of Liseiux

#story-of-a-soul #nature

My main reason for scepticism about the Huxley/Sagan theory is that the human brain is demonstrably eager to see faces in random patterns, as we know from scientific evidence, on top of the numerous legends about faces of Jesus, or the Virgin Mary, or Mother Teresa, being seen on slices of toast, or pizzas, or patches of damp on a wall. This eagerness is enhanced if the pattern departs from randomness in the specific direction of being symmetrical. ↗

— Richard Dawkins

#evidence #evolution #religion #science #sir-julian-huxley