“In the matter of experiencing and learning, take your time. You are unlearning years of things that had nothing to do with you, and learning new things that have everything to do with who you are trying to be.”
Source: Self-care is the Best Care: Check in With Yourself
“If you can see it, you can be it. If you have inspiring partnership to support you on the way. If you're always learning and you're giving back so that others can learn from you too, then you're always growing and moving forwards.”
“Si el cráneo fuera lo que parece - un recipiente semiesférico, una cavidad, un reservorio -, el aprendizaje sería una manera de ir rellenando un espacio vacío. Pero ocurre algo distinto. Es posible imaginar que cada nueva impresión cava otro hueco, lastima otro tanto la materia informe, nos vacía un poco más. Nacimos llenos de algo - de materia gris, de agua, de nosotros mismos -, y en todos se está produciendo, en cada instante, la alquimia lenta de la erosión. Llevamos una caverna en proceso encima del cuello, pedazos que serán pedacería.”
Source: Papeles falsos
“As we practice life-long learning, never accept ignorance in yourself, but do tolerate it in others.”
Source: Healthy Thinking Habits: Seven Attitude Skills Simplified
“There was no way Penny would go to House and let Sam see her. That would ruin everything. Sam would take one look at her and be like, "Yikes, never mind.”
Source: Emergency Contact
“What are we but a series of evolutions?' she said gaily, spearing another shell. 'Each one a better incarnation. One day you'll be a person who eats snails.”
Source: Delphine Jones Takes a Chance
“If you want to advance, you must act”
“I have a friend from my graduate school days at The Ohio State University whom we nicknamed Aladdin. Aladdin and I took a number of Arabic classes together. Every now and then, we would play pick-up basketball at the university gym. Aladdin couldn’t shoot, but he was one of the quickest, most intense defenders I have ever seen. One day, he went high up for a layup at 100 mph, bumped a defender, and fell square on his head. Aladdin lay there motionless for a few minutes before gingerly getting up. He had apparently suffered a concussion. We drove him to the ER, before he decided in the reception that he felt okay enough to go home. I’ll never forget, while we were leaving the gym and during the car ride, Aladdin kept asking people to speak Arabic to him. I probably heard the phrase “Speak Arabic to me, Binyamin! [my Arabic name]” at least two dozen times. Aladdin, in his dizzied and confused state, waiting to be seen for a potentially serious injury, was afraid that he had forgotten Arabic. The next day Aladdin texted everyone saying he felt fine. In hindsight, this story is a comical illustration of every language learner’s worst fear: losing the skills they worked so hard to acquire. As it turns out, Aladdin didn’t forget Arabic and currently lives in Dubai.”
Source: The Art of Learning a Foreign Language: 25 Things I Wish They Told Me
“If you look around the room you are in right now, you will observe a great diversity of items, shapes, sizes, textures, colors, and functions, with all their associated nuances and subtleties. Every career, hobby, occupation, sport, industry, philosophy, plant, animal, object, event, and sensory experience–visual and otherwise–corresponds to a specific language. Language, in a word, is all-encompassing, and there are numerous registers, dialects, idioms, metaphors, and synonyms that express the same idea in multiple ways. “Mastering” one’s native language is a lifelong pursuit. Mastering a foreign language is an even taller order.”
Source: The Art of Learning a Foreign Language: 25 Things I Wish They Told Me
“Learning is less than a curse than a distraction.”
Source: The Transitive Vampire: A Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager and the Doomed