“The people in your field, in your immediate circle, are like worlds unto themselves—their stories and viewpoints will naturally expand your horizons and build up your social skills. Mingle with as many different types of people as possible. Those circles will slowly widen.”
Robert Greene, The Daily Laws (Page 68)
“Social niceties are easy to do half-heartedly. But they’re not for us, they’re for the other person. When you show up begrudgingly, it’s not half-hearted, it’s cold hearted. A handshake, a greeting, the way we sit in a meeting or wear a mask–it’s a chance to connect and to make a difference for the person we’re with. All in, or not at all.”
Seth Godin, Blog
“A child meets another child with a smile, displaying his friendly attitude and joy. This same behavior lives in all sincere people. But very often, a man from one nation already hates a man from another nation, and is ready to cause him sufferings and even death, even before he meets him. Those who create these feelings in nations commit a terrible crime!”
Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 52)
“Many of us seek community solely to escape the fear of being alone. Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.”
bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions
“If you can teach a person kindness and love, but you do not, you lose a brother.”
Chinese Proverb, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 29)
“The majority of people are subjective toward themselves and objective toward all others, terribly objective sometimes, but the real task is, in fact, to be objective toward oneself and subjective toward all others.”
Sören Kierkegaard, via Sunbeams (Page 157)
“It’s a tricky balance, attempting to find resonance in someone’s story without reducing your suffering to sameness.”
Suleika Jaoaud, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 338)
“The power of story is to heal and to sustain. And if we are brave enough to tell our own story, we realize we’re not alone, again and again.”
Katherine, via Between Two Kingdoms (Page 307)
