June 2013
Trying to Learn a Foreign Language? Avoid Reminders of Home - ScienceNOW →
news.sciencemag.org
Something odd happened when Shu Zhang was giving a presentation to her classmates at the Columbia Business School in New York City. Zhang, a Chinese native, spoke fluent English, yet in the middle of her talk, she glanced over at her Chinese professor and suddenly blurted out a word in Mandarin. “I meant to say a transition word like ‘however,’ but used the Chinese version instead,” she says. “It really shocked me.”
“My tongue will tell the anger of my heart, or else my heart concealing it will break.”
—The Taming of the Shrew, William Shakespeare (via fuckyeahliteraryquotes)
“But it is a mistake, this extreme precision, this orderly and military progress in life; a convenience, a lie. There is always deep below it, even when we arrive punctually at the appointed time with our white waistcoats and polite formalities, a rushing stream of broken dreams, nursery rhymes, street cries, half-finished sentences and sights that rise and sink.”
—Virginia Woolf, from The Waves (via violentwavesofemotion)
“
We do a much greater disservice to girls, because we raise them to cater to the fragile egos of men. We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls: ‘You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten the man. If you are the breadwinner in your relationship with a man, you have to pretend that you’re not, especially in public otherwise you will ‘emasculate’ him.’
But what if we questioned the premise itself— why should a woman’s success be a threat to a man? What if we decide to simply dispose of that word? And I don’t think there’s an English word I despise more than ‘emasculation.’
” —Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, TedxEuston (x)
“If all insects on Earth disappeared, within 50 years all life on Earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the Earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish.”
—Jonas Salk (via ceedling)
“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?
The world would split open” —Muriel Rukeyser (via thepoemistrebloggs)
The world would split open” —Muriel Rukeyser (via thepoemistrebloggs)
“It is the awe before the miracle
that despite infinite chances,
that despite knowing that we are
the drops in the river of Heraclitus,
something in us endures:
immovable,
something that did not find what it was looking for.” —Jorge Luis Borges (via speakmnemosyne)
that despite infinite chances,
that despite knowing that we are
the drops in the river of Heraclitus,
something in us endures:
immovable,
something that did not find what it was looking for.” —Jorge Luis Borges (via speakmnemosyne)
“Don’t worry about your body.
It isn’t as small as it once was,
But honestly, the world needs more of you.” —Clementine von Radics (via lovemestarkly)
It isn’t as small as it once was,
But honestly, the world needs more of you.” —Clementine von Radics (via lovemestarkly)
Listen
“Gloria” by Van Morrison
“Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”
—Calvin Coolidge (via markfarts)
“It is a testimony to the decline in manners and morals, a mirror to our failings, a measure of absence… By a process of selective amnesia the past becomes a historical equivalent of the dream of primal bliss, or of the enchanted space which memory accords to childhood.”
—Raphael Samuel on the role of nostalgia in social memory (via perfectcoma)
“And your hunger is not for experience
but for understanding, as though it
could be had in the abstract.” —Louise Glück, Moonbeam (The Seven Ages)
but for understanding, as though it
could be had in the abstract.” —Louise Glück, Moonbeam (The Seven Ages)
“I wish people were all trees and I think I could enjoy them then.”
—Georgia O’Keeffe, 1921 (via girlinlondon)
“My heart trembles like a poor leaf.
The planets whirl in my dreams.
The stars press against my window.
I rotate in my sleep.
My bed is a warm planet.” —Marvin Mercer, 1981 (via apoetreflects)
The planets whirl in my dreams.
The stars press against my window.
I rotate in my sleep.
My bed is a warm planet.” —Marvin Mercer, 1981 (via apoetreflects)
“No, no, the true literary fanatic, the primeval reader, is looking for anything but a mirror—for an escape route, for an expanding horizon, for receding starscapes, for unimaginable monstrosities and incomprehensible (strictly) beauties. Also for meaning, for making sense of things, always with the proviso that complete sense cannot probably be made because of the restrictions of small things like death, and the configuration of the folds of our electrically charged, insensible grey matter.”
—A. S. Byatt, from The Biographer’s Tale (via aubade)
