Easily Quotes (page 3)
What's given, in fact, always depends on the person or thing it's given to. A minor incident in the street brings the cook to the door and entertains him more than I would be entertained by contemplating the most original idea, by reading the greatest book, or by having the most gratifying of useless dreams. If life is basically monotony, he has escaped it more than I. And he escapes it more easily than I. The truth isn't with him or with me, because it isn't with anyone, but happiness does...
Fernando Pessoa
I do not at all believe in human freedom in the philosophical sense…. Schopenhauer’s saying, ‘A man can do what he wants, but not will what he wants,’ has been a very real inspiration to me since my youth; it has been a continual consolation in the face of life’s hardships, my own and others’, and an unfailing wellspring of tolerance. This realization mercifully mitigates the easily paralyzing sense of responsibility and prevents us from taking ourselves and other people too seriously; it is...
Albert Einstein
O but," quoth she, "great griefe will not be tould, And can more easily be thought, then said." "Right so"; quoth he, "but he, that never would, Could never: will to might gives greatest aid." "But grief," quoth she, "does great grow displaid, If then it find not helpe, and breedes despaire." "Despaire breedes not," quoth he, "where faith is staid." "No faith so fast," quoth she, "but flesh does paire."Flesh may empaire," quoth he, "but reason can repaire.
Edmund Spenser
Character isn't what we think it is or, rather, what we want it to be. It isn't a stable, easily identifiable set of closely related traits, and it only seems that way because of a glitch in the way our brains are organized. Character is more like a bundle of habits and tendencies and interests, loosely bound together and dependent, at certain times, on circumstance and context.
Malcolm Gladwell