Bravely Default Quotes

If internet explorer is brave enough to ask you to make it your default browser, then you are brave enough to ask your crush out.

People focused so much on the prince slipping on Cinderella’s lost shoe that they didn’t realize the real happily ever after was the moment she realized she was brave enough to go to the damned ball alone in the first place. “I’m not waiting around for some fuckboy to bring me a shoe. I’m here, working for you. I’m finding my own shoe,

One of the signature mistakes with empathy is that we believe we can take our lenses off and look through the lenses of someone else. We can’t. Our lenses are soldered to who we are. What we can do, however, is honor people’s perspectives as truth even when they’re different from ours. That’s a challenge if you were raised in majority culture—white, straight, male, middle-class, Christian—and you were likely taught that your perspective is the correct perspective and everyone else needs to adjust their lens. Or, more accurately, you weren’t taught anything about perspective taking, and the default—My truth is the truth—is reinforced by every system and situation you encounter.

People focused so much on the prince slipping on Cinderella’s lost shoe that they didn’t realize the real happily ever after was the moment she realized she was brave enough to go to the damned ball alone in the first place.

People do not by default follow the strongest, but they follow the bravest

I was taught to be brave from my father. Dip your toe in every ocean and try everything and anything. Learn, explore, take the world on… And from my mom, I learned self-sufficiency. Of course, she’d taught me by default, but watching her showed me exactly who I didn’t want to be. And from Michael—as well as Damon, Will, and Kai—I learned to breathe fire. I learned to walk as if the path were carved for me and me alone, and to treat the world as if it should know I was coming.

Caleb told me that our mother said there was evil in everyone, and the first step to loving someone else is to recognize that evil in ourselves, so we can forgive them. So how can I hold Tobias’s desperation against him, like I’m better than him, like I’ve never let my own brokenness blind me? “Hey,” I say, crushing Caleb’s directions into my back pocket. He turns, and his expression is stern, familiar. It looks the way it did the first few weeks I knew him, like a sentry guarding his innermost thoughts. “Listen,” I say. “I thought I was supposed to figure out if I could forgive you or not, but now I’m thinking you didn’t do anything to me that I need to forgive, except maybe accusing me of being jealous of Nita…” He opens his mouth to interject, but I hold up a hand to stop him. “If we stay together, I’ll have to forgive you over and over again, and if you’re still in this, you’ll have to forgive me over and over again too,” I say. “So forgiveness isn’t the point. What I really should have been trying to figure out is whether we were still good for each other or not.” All the way home I thought about what Amar said, about every relationship having its problems. I thought about my parents, who argued more often than any other Abnegation parents I knew, who nonetheless went through each day together until they died. Then I thought of how strong I have become, how secure I feel with the person I now am, and how all along the way he has told me that I am brave, I am respected, I am loved and worth loving. “And?” he says, his voice and his eyes and his hands a little unsteady. “And,” I say, “I think you’re still the only person sharp enough to sharpen someone like me.” “I am,” he says roughly. And I kiss him. His arms slip around me and hold me tight, lifting me onto the tips of my toes. I bury my face in his shoulder and close my eyes, just breathing in the clean smell of him, the smell of wind. I used to think that when people fell in love, they just landed where they landed, and they had no choice in the matter afterward. And maybe that’s true of beginnings, but it’s not true of this, now. I fell in love with him. But I don’t just stay with him by default as if there’s no one else available to me. I stay with him because I choose to, every day that I wake up, every day that we fight or lie to each other or disappoint each other. I choose him over and over again, and he chooses me.

The heroine's journey, or her lack of one, serves as a reminder that whatever is dictated is not eternal, not predestined, not necessarily "true." The trajectory of literary women from brave to blank to bitter is a product of material social conditions. The fact that the heroine's journey is framed as a default one for women is proof of our failure to see, for so long, that other paths were possible, and that many other ones exist.

Optimism is radical. It is the hard choice, the brave choice. And it is, it seems to me, most needed now, in the face of despair—just as a car is most useful when you have a distance to close. Otherwise it is a large, unmovable object parked in the garage. These days, the safest way for someone to appear intelligent is being skeptical by default. We seem sophisticated when we say “we don’t believe” and disingenuous when we say “we do.” History and fable have both proven that nothing is ever entirely lost. David can take Goliath. A beach in Normandy can turn the tide of war. Bravery can topple the powerful. These facts are often seen as exceptional, but they are not. Every day, we all become the balance of our choices—choices between love and fear, belief or despair. No hope is ever too small.

Another perk of Thoughtfully Fit is that you don’t have to go to a gym or hire a trainer to get started. As you already know, life will hand you plenty of opportunities to practice! Whether it’s a disgruntled customer service worker, a challenging colleague, or a saucy teenager, every day we encounter opportunities to become more aware of our thoughts and behaviors. My challenge to you is to embrace this training ground. Find opportunities to engage your core, notice your thoughts, and make different choices. Be brave enough to override your defaults, quiet your trash talk, and challenge the stories you’re telling yourself. If you practice being Thoughtfully Fit, you’ll be prepared for whatever problems life throws your way. And while life won’t get easier—you’ll still have frustrating neighbors, annoying colleagues, bad news, and unwelcome adversity—it will feel easier because you prepared and trained.

Brave applies a two-pronged strategy to this problem. It has created a new browser designed to work seamlessly with its tokens. The browser blocks all ads by default and, with sophisticated analytics, collates and anonymizes data from users that indicate how much time they spend looking at certain content. That way it can come up with a useful record of the amount of time we all spend at Internet sites without identifying us. As a user of the Brave browser, you are offered the potential to earn BATs for selectively turning off the ad blocker to view ads; tokens are delivered to an integrated wallet that you uniquely control. You can in turn use those tokens to reward publishers of content that you appreciate—in effect, tipping them with donations. Meanwhile, to place ads with publishers of content on the system, advertisers must first acquire BATs and then pay those tokens to publishers, with the price for those ads dictated by the attention metrics associated with the latter’s content.

Finally, I said, “You would get your feelings hurt and cry?” Laura reluctantly responded, “Yes. Why?” “Well …,” I hesitated, “I’m thinking that crying and getting my feelings hurt would be the brave option for me.” Laura sounded surprised. “What do you mean?” I explained the best I could. “Mean and nasty is my default setting. It doesn’t take courage for me to be shaming back. I can use my shame superpowers for evil in a split second. Letting myself feel hurt—that’s a totally different story. I think your default is my courage.

The mindfulness road can be rocky. It’s brave to stay with the present moment, especially when we don’t like what’s happening. This courage is known as an ‘approach’ mentality. Approach-minded people move towards challenge with interest. They don’t just push away or run from difficulties. When driving in the snow, it’s better to turn into a skid, even though it runs against instinct. Sometimes, the skids in life are the same. The opposite of approach is avoidance, which is a sign of poor psychological health. Avoidance means habitually fleeing from fears: turning away from the skids. Of course, it’s good to stay out of danger when we can – it doesn’t make sense to put our hand in a fire – but when avoidance becomes a default setting, an automatic response to everything unpleasant, we restrict our range of responses.

Numbing or taking the edge off doesn’t have the same consequences as addiction, but they are nonetheless severe and life-altering for one reason: We cannot selectively numb emotion. If we numb the dark, we numb the light. If we take the edge off pain and discomfort, we are, by default, taking the edge off joy, love, belonging, and the other emotions that give meaning to our lives.

In the absence of data, we will always make up stories. It’s how we are wired. Meaning making is in our biology, and when we’re in struggle, our default is often to come up with a story that makes sense of what’s happening and gives our brain information on how best to selfprotect.