“I had long since insisted upon interpreting the things that Fate forced me to do as victories of my own will and intelligence, and now this bad habit had grown into a sort of frenzied arrogance. In the nature of what I was calling my intelligence there was a touch of something illegitimate, a touch of the sham pretender who has been placed on the throne by some freak chance. This dolt of a usurper could not foresee the revenge that would inevitably be wreaked upon his stupid despotism.” LongHas BeensChanceMy OwnFateStupidHabitVictoryCallingRevengeArroganceFreakThronesDespotismBad HabitsInterpretingPretenderUsurpers Author:Yukio Mishima
“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.” PainHappinessArtistEvilInterestingTroubleStupidHabitTerribleIntellectualBoredomConsideringRefusalBad HabitsTreasonBanalityPendants Author:Ursula K. Le Guin
“The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.” MenHumansWholeLife IsUnderstandingLosesSimpleEffectsStupidHabitExerciseCreaturesFindingsDifficultyWhole LifeInventionIgnorantOccasionsOperationsPerformingExertionWealth Of Nations Book:The Wealth of Nations (illustrated) Source: The Wealth of Nations (illustrated)
“You think me foolish to call instruction a torment, but if you had been as much used as myself to hear poor little children first learning their letters and then learning to spell, if you had ever seen how stupid they can be for a whole morning together, and how tired my poor mother is at the end of it, as I am in the habit of seeing almost every day of my life at home, you would allow that to torment and to instruct might sometimes be used as synonymous words.” IfsThinkingFirstsChildrenLittlesEndsSometimesWholeHomeMightTogetherUsedMotherPoorMorningSeeingStupidHabitLettersTiredFoolishSpellsInstructionTorment Book:Northanger Abbey (illustrated) Source: Northanger Abbey (illustrated)