A Quote by Rose Wilder Lane

Our quilts were more than useful, they had the faint sentimentality of a pressed flower. And no more beauty. We did not value them for their appearance, but for the memories in them, for their good wearing qualities and the thrift they represented.
Beauty—or the desire to be beautiful—is in itself a dangerous motivation. Someone (I forgot who) once said, ‘Does the person who loves someone for their beauty really love them?’ So don’t focus on beauty ... a respectable appearance is sufficient to make people more interested in your soul. It is the sum of our experiences that makes us interesting, and having been through a time in your life in which you were in a bad place (or what you perceived as a bad place) physically, can be useful. It can even be necessary.
I have never had parents who set good examples, parents whose expectations were worth living up to, but she did. I can see them within her, the courage and the beauty they pressed into her like a handprint.
We are so vain as to set the highest value upon those things to which nature has assigned the lowest place. What can be more coarse and rude in the mind than the precious metals, or more slavish and dirty than the people that dig and work them? And yet they defile our minds more than our bodies, and make the possessor fouler than the artificer of them. Rich men, in fine, are only the greater slaves.
If, for example, I saw my grandparents or my daughter for an instant, would I recognize them? Probably not, because in looking so hard for a way to keep them alive, remembering them in the most minimal details, I have been changing them, adorning them with qualities they may not have had. I have given them a destiny much more complex than the ones they lived.
People, materials, facilities, money, and time are the resources available to us for conducting our business. By applying our skills, we turn these resources into useful products and services. If we do a good job, customers pay us more for our products than the sum of our costs in producing and distributing them. This difference, our profit, represents the value we add to the resources we utilize.
So our films had a lot more to them than entertainment value, and I'm glad that a lot of people recognize that now. People realize now the value of them as educational.
When I had finished the book I knew that no matter what Scott did, nor how he behaved, I must know it was like a sickness and be of any help I could to him and try to be a good friend. He had many good, good friends, more than anyone I knew. But I enlisted as one more, whether I could be of any use to him or not. If he could write a book as fine as The Great Gatsby I was sure that he could write an even better one. I did not know Zelda yet, and so I did not know the terrible odds that were against him. But we were to find them out soon enough.
The possessions God allows us to have are intended for our use, not our enjoyment. Trying to squeeze something out of them that was never in them in the first place is a futile endeavor. A cow's udders, gently pressed, will yield sweet milk, nourishing and refreshing. Applying more and more pressure will not produce greater quantities of milk. We lose the good of material things by expecting too much from them. Those who try hardest to please themselves with earthly goods find the least satisfaction in them.
Brown people and black people and red people swarmed through our great halls, until those who were white looked simply faded-out human beings beside them. Indeed, I came to see that white is not a color in skin any more than in textiles, and if it had not quality, it had no value even for humanity. I saw that color in skin had a certain advantage in strength and warmth as a means of beauty.
People were actually 6 times more likely to buy a jar of jam if they had encountered 6 than if they encountered 24, so what we learned from this study was that while people were more attracted to having more options, that's what sort of got them in the door or got them to think about jam, when it came to choosing time they were actually less likely to make a choice if they had more to choose from than if they had fewer to choose from.
What is natural in me, is natural in many other men, I infer, and so I am not afraid to write that I never had loved Steerforth better than when the ties that bound me to him were broken. In the keen distress of the discovery of his unworthiness, I thought more of all that was brilliant in him, I softened more towards all that was good in him, I did more justice to the qualities that might have made him a man of a noble nature and a great name, than ever I had done in the height of my devotion to him.
To be aware of a single shortcoming within oneself is more useful than to be aware of a thousand in somebody else. Rather than speaking badly about people and in ways that will produce friction and unrest in their lives, we should practice a purer perception of them, and when we speak of others, speak of their good qualities.
One of the greatest and also the commonest of faults is for men to believe that, because they never hear their shortcomings spoken of, or read about them in cold print, others can have no knowledge of them. GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG, The Reflections of Lichtenberg We are often more agreeable through our faults than our good qualities.
Who hated sin more than the saints? But they did not hate the sinners at the same time, nor condemn them, nor turn away from them. But they suffered with them, admonished them, comforted them. gave them remedies as sickly members, and did all they could to heal them.
Antiphon, as another man gets pleasure from a good horse, or a dog, or a bird, I get even more pleasure from good friends. And if I have something good, I teach it to them, and I introduce them to others who will be useful to them with respect to virtue. And together with my friends I go through the treasures of wise men of old which they left behind written in books, and we peruse them. If we see something good, we pick it out and hold it to be a great profit, if we are able to prove useful to one another.
You know, all these sentiments about beauty coming from within, they've always resonated when I've read them, but it takes a bit of living to truly appreciate them. To realise we are so much more than our experiences, that we are who we are because of the lessons we've learnt, now that's what true 'beauty' is for me.
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