Quotes

The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies.

Cesare Pavese, from his diaries 1935-50

Character is higher than intellect… A great soul will be strong to live, as well as to think.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (via ireadintothings)

Wise men talk about ideas, intellectuals about facts, and the ordinary man talks about what he eats.

Mongolian Proverb (via)

Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine.

Fran Lebowitz, American author (via)

Smart people talk about ideas. Common people talk about things. Mediocre people talk about people.

Jules Romains, French poet & writer (via)

People tend to forget their duties but remember their rights.

Indira Gandhi (via iindia) (via radarchive) (via robot-heart) (via edatrix)

About 10% of Cambridge University Press’s sales of academic and professional titles are generated by books printed on demand…. Before POD, if sales of one of the publisher’s books dropped below 50 copies a year, it was taken out of print. Now a publisher can keep titles available forever.

The Economist (link)

Two regional titles in Germany, Berliner Morgenpost and Hamburger Abendblatt, have put up pay walls around premium content. But two big national titles, Bild and Die Welt (owned by publishing company Axel Springer), are keeping their websites free while selling iPhone-app subscriptions for $2 to $5 a month. And when The Guardian, Britain’s most-visited newspaper website, launched a $3.73 iPhone app — despite outspoken rejection of the pay-wall model — it sold 70,000 in the first month.

Ad Age (link)

Le Monde in France, for example, has been charging for premium content since 2002, and has racked up 100,000 subscribers steadily paying $8 a month — even though its traditional newspaper circulation is barely more than 300,000.

Ad Age (link)

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

C. S. Lewis (via libraryland)

A wonderful thing about a book, in contrast to a computer screen, is that you can take it to bed with you.

Daniel J. Boorstin (via bookshelves)

A room without books is like a body without a soul.

Cicero (via bookshelves)

Man muss das Unmögliche versuchen, um das Mögliche zu erreichen.

(You have to try the impossible to reach possible things.)

Hermann Hesse (via germanheit)

I remain suspicious, however, of anyone who argues that online social networks, like Facebook, will revolutionize human interactions. Whenever I encounter some utopian celebration of Facebook, I always go back and read some Jane Goodall, or Robert Sapolsky, and remind myself that our social lives haven’t changed that much since we were hairy apes patrolling the African forest. In fact, the most obvious parallel for just about every primate troop remains high school. It’s not that Facebook doesn’t matter – it’s just that our social lives are stubborn things, and tend to revolve around the same constants regardless of the technology.

Jonah Lehrer, “Facebook Friends,” The Frontal Cortex (via somethingchanged)

I bought a decaffeinated coffee table, you can’t even see a difference.

Author Unknown (via coffeechat)

Only the very top echelon of designers writes. And let me tell you, that top echelon writes like the wind: read Stefan Bucher, read Michael Rock, read Michael Bierut, read Jessica Helfand, read Sagmeister—these people are not only literate, they are wonderful writers…

natalia ilyin (via)

The Grammys = the old guard / old media propping up their puppets trying to convince the outside world (and each other) they’re relevant.

Trent Reznor (via)

Designers should be arbiters of the truth: They should be the kind of people who stand up and tell it like it is, and that usually calls for courage.

Kevin Mattice (via clear war)

Es gehört oft mehr Mut dazu seine Meinung zu ändern, als ihr treu zu bleiben.

(Very often you need more courage to change your opinion than to stick to it.)

Friedrich Hebbel (via germanheit)

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Ray Bradbury (via artpixie) (via atomicblonde) (via oneay) (via ilovereadingandwriting)

iPad is an incredible opportunity for developers to re-imagine every single category of desktop and web software there is. Seriously, if you’re a developer and you’re not thinking about how your app could work better on the iPad and its descendants, you deserve to get left behind.

Joe Hewitt on the iPad (via designinfo)

If you read good books, when you write, good books will come out of you.

Natalie Goldberg (via ilovereadingandwriting)

Clients are the difference between art and design.

Michael Bierut (via soulellis)

By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he’s wrong.

Charles Wadsworth (via rulesformyunbornson) (via thomasfitzpatrick)