Quotes About Balance

The thought struck Dennis that a hundred years before he was even born Tinuva undoubtedly knew of the river. Again he realized just how ancient the elven race was and with it came the recognition of just how much they risked when facing battle: it wasn't just a score of years in the balance, it was a score of decades.

I know he hasn't a mean or petty bone in him, but one can err on the side of caution as well as rashness.

Then don't assume you need to be the one to make the sacrifice. Don't hold your own needs as less important than other people's.

No nonsense. No jealousy. No neediness. Respect. Affection. Comfort. Chemistry. It was the kind of relationship people who could take care of themselves did well.

As Plato: It is an essential feature of the just state that the wealthy be kept away from political power and that the politically powerful be kept away from wealth.

For such a woman, a child is so substantial a setback to her own ambition that, in order to offset the setback, the child must earn back its existence by being so exceptional as to add to, rather than subtract from, the ambitious mother's tallying of her successes. So feminism, I am sorry to say, has only intensified the projectification of children.

And so there I was where so many young women were, trying to locate ourselves somewhere between being disdained or shut out for being unattractive and being menaced or resented for being attractive, to hover between two zones of punishment in space that was itself so thin that perhaps it never existed, trying to find some impossible balance of being desirable to those we desired and being safe from those we did not.

Think of how much more time and energy we would have to focus on other things that matter if we weren't so busy surviving.

How do you calculate upon the unforeseen? It seems to be an art of recognizing the role of the unforeseen, of keeping your balance amid surprises, of collaborating with chance, of recognizing that there are some essential mysteries in the world and thereby a limit to calculation, to plan, to control.

thinking is generally thought of as doing nothing in a production-oriented culture, and doing nothing is hard to do. It's best done by disguising it as doing something, and the something closest to doing nothing is walking. Walking itself is the intentional act closest to the unwilled rhythms of the body, to breathing and the beating of the heart. It strikes a delicate balance between working and idling, being and doing.

Modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought, or thoughtfulness.

We don't even have a language for this emotion, in which the wonderful comes wrapped in the terrible, joy in sorrow, courage in fear. We cannot welcome disaster, but we can value the responses, both practical and psychological.

Finding ways to appreciate advances without embracing complacency is a delicate task.

So many of us believe in perfection, which ruins everthing else, because the perfect is not only the enemy of the good, itÄs also the enemy of the realistic, the possible, and the fun.

PomyÅ›lcie, jak wiele czasu i energii mogÅ'ybyÅ›my poÅ›wiÄ™ci? najró?niejszym wa?nym sprawom, gdybyÅ›my tylko nie byÅ'y a? tak zajÄ™te samym przetrwaniem.

Adulthood is made up of a prudent anticipation and a philosophical memory that make you navigate more slowly and steadily.

The multiplication of technologies in the name of efficiency is actually eradicating free time by making it possible to maximize the time and place for production and minimize the unstructured travel time in between. New timesaving technologies make most workers more productive, not more free, in a world which seems to be accelerating around them.

Those eagles, like angels, don't distinguish between work and play. To them, it is all one and the same.

Good enough is good enough. Perfect will make you a bit fat mess every time.

The soul needs the body.

She looked as if she were about to burst into tears, but she was wonderful at catching the ball of her own mood in mid-air.

the world had gone too far in its enthusiasm for moderation and the thing had to be stopped

I was like a sea pulled by two moons. This must mean a boiling of the waters, tides that rushed up and carried away structures meant for living in, and then receded till earth that should be covered lay naked.

is your home a good housemate? (Happy Starts at Home: Getting the Life You Want by Changing the Space You've Got, Rebecca West)