“Swimming cultivates imagination; the man with the most is he who can swim his solitary course night or day and forget a black earth full of people that push.”

–Annette Kellermann

Here’s a lovely turn of phrase from a friend of Tomasz Tunguz:

The entire story reminded me of an old friend who often tells me, “We are lent into each other’s keeping.” Our time with each other is borrowed, its duration is unknown, and that uncertainty makes it precious.

There’s also a moving story about Muhammad Ali’s empathy and his definition of evil.

Source: We are Lent into Each Other’s Keeping (I corrected a couple typos in the quote)

A gentleman never dances so well as the dancing master, and an ordinary fiddler makes better musique for a shilling than a gentleman will do after spending forty, and so in all the delights of the world almost.

–The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Weds. 27 January 1663/64

​“If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.”

Confucius

“I have to say, I get a lot of inspiration from just going out and pretending I’ve never been to this planet before. It’s a great way to remember just how absurd, strange, beautiful, and unlikely everything is around you.”

Brendan Constantine

The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.

—Muriel Rukeyser

“Do you know a cure for me?” “Why yes,” he said, “I know a cure for everything. Salt water.” “Salt water?” I asked him. “Yes,” he said, “in one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea.”

–Isak Dinesen (aka Karen Blixen)

(image credit)