What's a quote that has stuck with you for your whole life?
I always loved browsing such posts on reddit, so thought I should make one on lemmy too
Edit: Usually these kind of posts only used to have excerpts from books or ancient proverbs, but now I am seeing a lot more quotes from shows/movies/games are also resonating with people. It’s pretty cool to see.
“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.” - Mark Twain
Not really a quote, but a poem that I read in school. It’s called মৃত্যুঞ্জয় (The Death-defier). A rough translation is available here.
A couple of lines have stuck with me ever since.
‘‘যখন উদ্যত ছিল তোমার অশনি
তোমারে আমার চেয়ে বড়ো বলে নিয়েছিনু গণি
তোমার আঘাত-সাথে নেমে এলে তুমি
যেথা মোর আপনার ভূমি।’’
It translates roughly to
“When your thunder was ready to strike, I considered you mightier than me. But with your blows you came down. Here, with me, where I stand.”
It has taught me not to fear hardships, since nothing is ultimate. Everything looks scary from afar. But if we have the grit and determination to face it, all will crumble in front of our might. Even death has nothing on us, since out deeds and achievements will live on. This poem has given me inspiration in dark times. It has reminded me that all hope is not lost, no matter how grim everything might seem.
As fluffy as this quote sounds, I always find it relevant. From taking on a difficult task at work, to getting past ladder anxiety in a video game. If you’ve ever executed on something so well that afterwards you felt like it was a waste of time, it might be. You didn’t get an opportunity to learn. Which reminds me of another relevant quote, “Losing is fun!”
Instead of focusing exclusively on how fast you can get to the finish, which may result in missteps along the way that slow you down, focus on moving smoothly accounting for variables that might make the journey more rough and doing what you can to plan for/avoid them. Making everything “smooth sailing” all the way to the finish line. There’s a dozen different interpretations that can be applied here, and it’s more or less an adaptation of “slow and steady wins the race” but it’s so broad that it’s generally true.
Sometimes, speed for the sake of speed is faster, period, but often speed for the sake of speed comes with compromises and issues along the way which may make the whole process slower over all. I’d rather go smoothly than quickly.
A good real-world example of this is stop and go traffic. Instead of going quickly to catch up to the person ahead of you, then stopping abruptly, if you instead go at a slow/steady rate, you will burn less fuel, consume less of you brake material, and over all have a more pleasant drive than if you’re constantly stopping and going. In addition, if everyone were to adhere to this in heavy traffic, then most traffic jams would very likely be less impactful on travel delays. You’d get through congestion easier and with less frustration, and very likely arrive sooner, feeling more calm and relaxed.
When life gives you lemons, don’t make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back. Get mad! I don’t want your damn lemons, what am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life’s manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I’m the man who’s gonna burn your house down… with the lemons! I’m gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!
Cave Johnson, Portal 2
Maybe not words to live by, but certainly a memorable quote.
All these science spheres are made of asbestos all the way. Keeps out the rats. Let us know if you feel a shortness of breath, a persistent dry cough, or your heart-stopping. Because that is not part of the test. That’s asbestos…Worst case scenario, you miss out on a few rounds of Canasta, plus you forwarded the cause of science by three centuries. I punch those numbers into a calculator, it makes a happy face.
“you can stick your well-laid plan up your well-laid ass”
Been almost 30 years, what a dumb quote to come to mind so often. I never say it, haven’t seen Die Hard 3 since the '90s, no idea why it’s stuck so hard
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