Luck Related Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Luck Related. Here they are! All 100 of them:

Just his luck he was related to this grubby old dude. He hoped all sons of Neptune didn't share the same fate. First, you start carrying a man satchel. Next thing you know, you're running around in a bathrobe and pink bunny slippers, chasing chickens with a weed whacker.
Rick Riordan (The Son of Neptune (The Heroes of Olympus, #2))
Burning bridges behind you is understandable. It's the bridges before us that we burn, not realizing we may need to cross, that brings regret.
Anthony Liccione
This was how it was with travel: one city gives you gifts, another robs you. One gives you the heart’s affections, the other destroys your soul. Cities and countries are as alive and feeling, as fickle and uncertain as people. Their degrees of love and devotion are as varying as with any human relation. Just as one is good, another is bad.
Roman Payne (Cities & Countries)
Those white things have taken all I had or dreamed," she said, "and broke my heartstrings too. There is no bad luck in the world but whitefolks.
Toni Morrison (Beloved (Beloved Trilogy, #1))
The more they overestimated their own skill relative to luck, the less they learned from what the environment was trying to tell them, and the worse their decisions became: the participants grew increasingly less likely to switch to winning stocks, instead doubling down on losers or gravitating entirely toward bonds.
Maria Konnikova (The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win)
For the outsider--and everyone in this world is an outsider in relation to everyone else--something always seems worse or better than it does for the one directly concerned, whether that something is good luck or bad luck, an unhappy love affair or an 'artistic decline'.
Heinrich Böll (The Clown)
My mom believed that you make your own luck. Over the stove she had hung these old, maroon painted letters that spell out, “MANIFEST.” The idea being if you thought and dreamed about the way you wanted your life to be -- if you just envisioned it long enough, it would come into being. But as hard as I had manifested Astrid Heyman with her hand in mine, her blue eyes gazing into mine, her lips whispering something wild and funny and outrageous in my ear, she had remained totally unaware of my existence. Truly, to even dream of dreaming about Astrid, for a guy like me, in my relatively low position on the social ladder of Cheyenne Mountain High, was idiotic. And with her a senior and me a junior? Forget it. Astrid was just lit up with beauty: shining blonde ringlets, June sky blue eyes, slightly furrowed brow, always biting back a smile, champion diver on the swim team. Olympic level. Hell, Astrid was Olympic level in every possible way.
Emmy Laybourne
The rush to California, for instance, and the attitude, not merely of merchants, but of philosophers and prophets, so called, in relation to it, reflect the greatest disgrace on mankind. That so many are ready to live by luck, and so get the means of commanding the labor of others less lucky, without contributing any value to society! And that is called enterprise!
Henry David Thoreau (Civil Disobedience and Other Essays)
Hey…yeah. Okay.” Percy rubbed his eyes. Just his luck he was related to this grubby old dude. He hoped all sons of Neptune didn’t share the same fate. First, you start carrying a man satchel. Next thing you know, you’re running around in a bathrobe and pink bunny slippers, chasing chickens with a weed whacker.
Rick Riordan (The Son of Neptune (The Heroes of Olympus, #2))
It's safe to say that Carroll's words weren't a stroke of luck, but of genius. Something in that book makes people relate. Wonderland must be real.
Cameron Jace (Insanity (Insanity, #1))
What a well-designed forecasting system can do is sort out which statistics are relatively more susceptible to luck; batting average, for instance, is more erratic than home runs.
Nate Silver (The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't)
Now take a look at the cemetery. It is quite difficult to do so because people who fail do not seem to write memoirs, and, if they did, those business publishers I know would not even consider giving them the courtesy of a returned phone call (as to returned e-mail, fuhgedit). Readers would not pay $26.95 for a story of failure, even if you convinced them that it had more useful tricks than a story of success.* The entire notion of biography is grounded in the arbitrary ascription of a causal relation between specified traits and subsequent events. Now consider the cemetery. The graveyard of failed persons will be full of people who shared the following traits: courage, risk taking, optimism, et cetera. Just like the population of millionaires. There may be some differences in skills, but what truly separates the two is for the most part a single factor: luck. Plain luck.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Incerto, #2))
As for you, you’re a parson,’ he muttered; ‘you did well; a parson’s a very happy man. The calling absorbs you, eh? And so you’ve taken to the good path. Well! you would never have been satisfied otherwise. Your relatives, starting like you, have done a deal of evil, and still they are unsatisfied. It’s all logically perfect, my lad. A priest completes the family. Besides, it was inevitable. Our blood was bound to run to that. So much the better for you; you have had the most luck.
Émile Zola (Abbe Mouret’s Transgression illustrated: Emile Zola (Classics,Literature))
Just think of how his book has inspired, affected, and shaped the minds of children for almost one hundred and fifty years. It's safe to say that Carroll's words weren't a stroke of luck, but of genius. Something in that book makes people relate. Wonderland must be real.
Cameron Jace (Insanity (Insanity, #1))
Mitakuye Oyasın - ''We are all related, two-legged, four-legged, furred, finned, feathered, in the soil or growing from it.'' - Lakota, Native American Proverb
Rich Flanders (Under The Great Elm: A Life of Luck & Wonder)
People congregate according to their relative levels of luck.
Sarah Manguso (300 Arguments: Essays)
Raquel’s mother had driven her fiercely to do well in school, such that high academic prowess had been the only option. Others had come upon money by luck, or had relatives acting as patrons. Rob had had none of those things. All he’d had was a home, and a harried home at that, paired with his own drive. What he’d achieved, he’d achieved almost exclusively on his own.
Jeff Hobbs (The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League)
don't want to give the impression that perfectly normal, healthy, thoughtful, and balanced people are not drawn to orchids. I am told they exist. I just didn't have much luck finding them
Eric Hansen (Orchid Fever: A Horticultural Tale of Love, Lust, and Lunacy)
Randomness and luck are related, but there is a useful distinction between the two. You can think of randomness as operating at the level of a system and luck operating at the level of the individual.
Michael J. Mauboussin (The Success Equation: Untangling Skill and Luck in Business, Sports, and Investing)
Diplomacy, if conducted sensibly, is a matter of small gains offset by small losses, an attempt to maintain a state of equilibrium in which catastrophes are either mitigated or, with luck, avoided entirely.
William S. Maltby (Alba: A Biography of Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, Third Duke of Alba, 1507-1582)
How can you talk about the poor child without addressing the country that let her be so? It’s a relatively new way of thinking for me. I was raised to put all responsibility on the individual, on the bootstraps with which she ought pull herself up. But it’s the way of things that environment changes outcomes. Or, to put it in my first language: The crop depends on the weather, dudnit? A good seed’ll do ’er job ’n’ sprout, but come hail ’n’ yer plumb outta luck regardless.
Sarah Smarsh (Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth)
. . . bush-league sex compared to L.A.; pasties here —total naked public humping in L.A. . . . Las Vegas is a society of armed masturbators/gambling is the kicker here/sex is extra/weird trip for high rollers . . . house-whores for winners, hand jobs for the bad luck crowd.
Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream)
Yui developed her own theory: that for some people, life started loosening their joints when they were still in the cradle, and they had to work hard to hold the pieces together. She imagined those people juggling a bundle of limbs, ears, feet, and kidneys in their arms, like parts of the game Operation. But then, at some point, something would slot into place: they'd fall in love, start a family, get a well-paid job, a nice career, and they would begin to feel more stable. The truth was, though, they were just giving out parts of themselves to relatives and trusted friends; they were learning that it was normal not to be able to cope on your own, and that asking people for help was the only way forward if there were other things they wanted to do with their lives. They had to depend on others. And then? Then what would happen? That's where Yui believed luck came into it. Because if those people lost someone who had been looking after a fundamental piece of them, they would never be able to regain their balance. The harmony would be gone, along with their loved one.
Laura Imai Messina (The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World)
Cassandra caught my quizzical look and shrugged. “Problems adjusting. You just missed the latest of the new souls. It would seem none of us are quite as good with people as you are.” That was an understatement. With any luck, Cassandra hadn’t caused any psychological scarring with her “Yeah, you’re dead, get over it” speech. She wasn’t a people person. Ordinarily, I greeted the new souls and took special care to deal with any “adjustment problems.” I enjoyed that part of my work. It was one of the few good deeds I could credit myself with. But as much as I’d love to tell myself otherwise, I wasn’t settling in the souls out of the goodness of my heart. Just lack of better alternatives. The other gods had difficulties relating to humans. But those difficulties were nothing compared to the problems the humans in my court had relating to each other. Souls lose something the longer they’re dead. They forget what it was like to worry, to be scared, to be human. Just yesterday, I’d caught Cassandra telling a frightened new soul I’d gone through a dark phase back when Dante passed through, but not to worry. I hadn’t gone off my meds for centuries. Fucking Dante.
Kaitlin Bevis (The Iron Queen (Daughters of Zeus, #3))
the effects of a decline in any one person’s after-tax income are dramatically different from those of an across-the-board decline. If you alone experience an income decline, you’re less able to buy what you want. But when everyone’s income declines simultaneously, relative purchasing power is unaffected. And it’s relative purchasing power that determines who gets things that are in short supply.
Robert H. Frank (Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy)
There is a premium on conformity, and on silence. Enthusiasm is frowned upon, since it is likely to be noisy. The Admiral had caught a few kids who came to school before class, eager to practice on the typewriters. He issued a manifesto forbidding any students in the building before 8:20 or after 3:00—outside of school hours, students are "unauthorized." They are not allowed to remain in a classroom unsupervised by a teacher. They are not allowed to linger in the corridors. They are not allowed to speak without raising a hand. They are not allowed to feel too strongly or to laugh too loudly. Yesterday, for example, we were discussing "The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars/ But in ourselves that we are underlings." I had been trying to relate Julius Caesar to their own experiences. Is this true? I asked. Are we really masters of our fate? Is there such a thing as luck? A small boy in the first row, waving his hand frantically: "Oh, call on me, please, please call on me!" was propelled by the momentum of his exuberant arm smack out of his seat and fell on the floor. Wild laughter. Enter McHabe. That afternoon, in my letter-box, it had come to his attention that my "control of the class lacked control.
Bel Kaufman (Up the Down Staircase)
Shall I stop in to check on Bella before I go?” “Not dressed like that. You would give her palpitations if she knew you were going into danger for her benefit.” “Luckily, I am mostly immune to Bella’s powers and could cure such palpitations with a thought,” Gideon mused. Jacob raised a brow, taking the medic’s measure. He could not recall the last time he had heard the Ancient crack wise about anything. It was not a wholly unpleasant experience, and it amused the Enforcer. “I . . . am aware of what is occurring between you and Legna, as you know,” Jacob mentioned with casual quiet. “I am only recently Imprinted myself, but should you require—” He broke off, suddenly uncomfortable. “Of course, you probably know far more about Imprinting than I ever will.” He is reaching out to you. Legna’s soft encouragement made Gideon suddenly aware of that fact. It was one of those nuances he would have missed completely, rusty as he was with matters of friendship and how to relate better to others. “I am glad for the offer of any help you can provide,” Gideon said quickly. “In fact, I had wanted to ask you . . . something . . .” What did I want to ask him? he asked Legna urgently. I do not know! I did not tell you to engage him, just to graciously accept his offer. Oh. My apologies. Still, you are clever enough to think of something, are you not? Legna knew he was baiting her, so she laughed. Ask him why it is you seem to constantly irritate me. I will ask him no such thing, Magdelegna. Well then, you had better come up with an alternative, because that is the only suggestion I have. “Yes?” Jacob was encouraging neutrally, trying to be patient as the medic seemed to gather his thoughts. “Do you find that your mate tends to lecture you incessantly?” he asked finally. Jacob laughed out loud. “You know something, I can actually advise you about that, Gideon.” “Can you?” The medic actually sounded hopeful. “Give up. Now. While you still have your sanity. Arguing with her will get you nowhere. And, also, never ever ask questions that refer to the whys and wherefores of women, females, or any other feminine-based criticism. Otherwise you will only earn an argument at a higher decibel level. Oh, and one other thing.” Gideon cocked a brow in question. “All the rules I just gave you, as well as all the ones she lays down during the course of your relationship, can and will change at whim. So, as I see it, you can consider yourself just as lost as every other man on the planet. Good luck with it.” “That is not a very heartening thought,” Gideon said wryly, ignoring Legna’s giggle in his background thoughts.
Jacquelyn Frank (Gideon (Nightwalkers, #2))
Son of Neptune!” Phineas exclaimed. “I thought I smelled the ocean on you, Percy Jackson. I’m also a son of Neptune, you know.” “Hey…yeah. Okay.” Percy rubbed his eyes. Just his luck he was related to this grubby old dude. He hoped all sons of Neptune didn’t share the same fate. First, you start carrying a man satchel. Next thing you know, you’re running around in a bathrobe and pink bunny slippers, chasing chickens with a weed whacker.
Rick Riordan (The Son of Neptune (The Heroes of Olympus, #2))
Concerns about relative position are a hard fact of human nature. No biologist is surprised that they loom so large in human psychology, since relative position was always by far the best predictor of reproductive success. People who didn’t care how well they were doing in relative terms would have been ill-equipped for the competitive environments in which we evolved. Few parents, on reflection, would want their children to be stripped of positional concerns completely.
Robert H. Frank (Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy)
For months beforehand, I fielded calls from British media. A couple of the reporters asked me to name some British chefs who had inspired me. I mentioned the Roux brothers, Albert and Michel, and I named Marco Pierre White, not as much for his food as for how—by virtue of becoming an apron-wearing rock-star bad boy—he had broken the mold of whom a chef could be, which was something I could relate to. I got to London to find the Lanesborough dining room packed each night, a general excitement shared by everyone involved, and incredibly posh digs from which I could step out each morning into Hyde Park and take a good long run around Buckingham Palace. On my second day, I was cooking when a phone call came into the kitchen. The executive chef answered and, with a puzzled look, handed me the receiver. Trouble at Aquavit, I figured. I put the phone up to my ear, expecting to hear Håkan’s familiar “Hej, Marcus.” Instead, there was screaming. “How the fuck can you come to my fucking city and think you are going to be able to cook without even fucking referring to me?” This went on for what seemed like five minutes; I was too stunned to hang up. “I’m going to make sure you have a fucking miserable time here. This is my city, you hear? Good luck, you fucking black bastard.” And then he hung up. I had cooked with Gordon Ramsay once, a couple of years earlier, when we did a promotion with Charlie Trotter in Chicago. There were a handful of chefs there, including Daniel Boulud and Ferran Adrià, and Gordon was rude and obnoxious to all of them. As a group we were interviewed by the Chicago newspaper; Gordon interrupted everyone who tried to answer a question, craving the limelight. I was almost embarrassed for him. So when I was giving interviews in the lead-up to the Lanesborough event, and was asked who inspired me, I thought the best way to handle it was to say nothing about him at all. Nothing good, nothing bad. I guess he was offended at being left out. To be honest, though, only one phrase in his juvenile tirade unsettled me: when he called me a black bastard. Actually, I didn’t give a fuck about the bastard part. But the black part pissed me off.
Marcus Samuelsson (Yes, Chef)
Looking into each other's eyes and speaking together in low tones, it becomes apparent that she hopes you will walk her through her troubles and show her that male-female relations can be lovely even in loveless union. She is looking for lust fulfilled but she searches also for respect, and in this she is out of luck because you do not know her or like her very much and you do not respect yourself and so the most you can offer this girl is time out of her life and an unsatisfactory meeting of bodies and, if the fates are generous, a couple of laughs and good feelings. At any rate there will unquestionably be a divot in your hearts before dawn and Peg seems to pick up on this after thirty minutes of groping and pawing (the car interior is damp with dew) she breaks away and with great exasperation says, "What do you think you're doing?" You are smiling, because it is an utterly stupid and boring question, and you say to her, "I am sitting in an American car, trying to make out in America," a piece of poetry that arouses something in her, and you both climb into the back seat for a meeting even less satisfactory than you feared it might be. Now she is crying and you are shivering and it is time to go home and if you had a watch you would snap your wrist to look meaningfully at it but she dabs at her face and says she wants you to come upstairs and share a special-occasion bottle of very old and expensive wine and as there is no way not to do this you follow her through the dusty lobby and into the lurching, diamond-gated elevator and into her cluttered apartment to scrutinize her furnishings and unread or improperly read paperbacks, and you wonder if there is anything more depressing than the habitats of young people, young and rudderless women in particular.
Patrick deWitt (Ablutions)
In theory, if some holy book misrepresented reality, its disciples would sooner or later discover this, and the text’s authority would be undermined. Abraham Lincoln said you cannot deceive everybody all the time. Well, that’s wishful thinking. In practice, the power of human cooperation networks depends on a delicate balance between truth and fiction. If you distort reality too much, it will weaken you, and you will not be able to compete against more clear-sighted rivals. On the other hand, you cannot organise masses of people effectively without relying on some fictional myths. So if you stick to unalloyed reality, without mixing any fiction with it, few people will follow you. If you used a time machine to send a modern scientist to ancient Egypt, she would not be able to seize power by exposing the fictions of the local priests and lecturing the peasants on evolution, relativity and quantum physics. Of course, if our scientist could use her knowledge in order to produce a few rifles and artillery pieces, she could gain a huge advantage over pharaoh and the crocodile god Sobek. Yet in order to mine iron ore, build blast furnaces and manufacture gunpowder the scientist would need a lot of hard-working peasants. Do you really think she could inspire them by explaining that energy divided by mass equals the speed of light squared? If you happen to think so, you are welcome to travel to present-day Afghanistan or Syria and try your luck. Really powerful human organisations – such as pharaonic Egypt, the European empires and the modern school system – are not necessarily clear-sighted. Much of their power rests on their ability to force their fictional beliefs on a submissive reality. That’s the whole idea of money, for example. The government makes worthless pieces of paper, declares them to be valuable and then uses them to compute the value of everything else. The government has the power to force citizens to pay taxes using these pieces of paper, so the citizens have no choice but to get their hands on at least some of them. Consequently, these bills really do become valuable, the government officials are vindicated in their beliefs, and since the government controls the issuing of paper money, its power grows. If somebody protests that ‘These are just worthless pieces of paper!’ and behaves as if they are only pieces of paper, he won’t get very far in life.
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow)
Let's face it, we all got issues. Most of the time we can deal with our own overstuffed luggage, but every once in a while a few marbles bust out of the bag, go rolling down the aisle, and we got no choice but to chase after them. Chasing after our lost marbles is like an out-of-body experience. For a while it's like we become somebody else—someone we don't recognize. It scares us and gives us new and bigger headaches...They got shrinks to analyze why we do weird crap. Sometimes they tell us it's all because of our parents, which makes us happy, because we all want to blame our parents for everything, right?...No one ever seems to take responsibility themselves—because if we don't blame it on our parents, or the devil, or the government, or the freaking position of Venus in relation to Mars, then we're still left with that big ugly 'why?' Most of the time we know for sure what we did, when we did it, and where it happened. Which means we're not playing Boggle anymore; now it's Clue. But does anyone ask why Colonel Mustard killed Professor Plum with the lead pipe in the ballroom? No. When we look at our own lead pipes and ask ourselves why, the answer never really comes, so we find someone or something to blame, because 'I don't know' is not an acceptable answer.
Neal Shusterman (Ship Out of Luck (Antsy Bonano, #3))
exulansis n. the tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it—whether through envy or pity or mere foreignness—which allows it to drift away from the rest of your story, until it feels out of place, almost mythical, wandering restlessly in the fog, no longer even looking for a place to land. Latin exulans, exile, wanderer, derived from the Latin name of the Wandering Albatross, diomedea exulans, who spend most of their life in flight, rarely landing, going hours without even flapping their wings. The albatross is a symbol of good luck, a curse, and a burden, and sometimes all three at once. Pronounced “ek-suh-lan-sis.” la
John Koenig (The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows)
When Alice was younger, her father had fashioned a rough mask from evergreen needles and lake grass glued to a rotten shell of pine bark, shed like a skin. He secured it to the end of their canoe with heavy yellow cord, telling Alice their ancient Dutch relatives believed water fairies lived in the figureheads of ships, protecting the vessels and their sailors from all manner of ills- storms, narrow and treacherous passageways, fevers, and bad luck. Kaboutermannekes he called them. If the ship ran aground, or even worse, if it sank, the Kaboutermannekes would guide the seafarers' souls to the Land of the Dead. Without a water fairy to guide him, a sailor's soul would be lost at sea forever.
Tracy Guzeman (The Gravity of Birds)
the encounter from a holdup to one that involved, at least to some degree, a rational democratic decision. In this case his success was largely dependent on luck: the robbers could have been drunk, or alienated beyond the reach of reason, and then he might have been seriously hurt. But the point is still valid: human relations are malleable, and if a person has the appropriate skills their rules can be transformed. But before considering in more depth how relationships can be reshaped to provide optimal experiences, it is necessary to take a detour through the realms of solitude. Only after understanding a bit better how being alone affects the mind can we see more clearly why companionship is so indispensable to well-being.
Mihály Csíkszentmihályi (Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience)
All the time God ever spent on you was wasted, an' your mother's had the same luck. I s'pose God's used to having creatures 'at He's made go wrong, but I pity your mother. Goodness knows a woman suffers an' works enough over her children, an' then to fetch a boy to man's estate an' have him, of his own free will an' accord, be a liar! Young man, truth is the cornerstone o' the temple o' character. Nobody can put up a good buildin' without a solid foundation; an' you can't do solid character buildin' with a lie at the base. Man 'at's a liar ain't fit for anything! Can't trust him in no sphere or relation o' life; or in any way, shape, or manner. You passed out your word like a man, an' like a man I took it an' went off trustin' you, an' you failed me.
Gene Stratton-Porter (The Song of the Cardinal)
I feels evil myself when I sees a white cop talking smart to a colored woman, like I did the other day. A middle-aged brownskin lady had run through a red light on Lenox Avenue by accident, and this cop were glaring at her as if she had committed some kind of major crime. He was asking her what did she think the streets was for, to use for a speedway--as if twenty miles an hour were speeding. So I says to the cop, 'Would you talk that way to your mama?' "He ignored me. And as good luck would have it, he did not know I had put him in the dozens. Bu that time quite a crowd had gathered around. When he saw all them black faces, he lowered his voice, in fact shut up altogether, and just wrote that old lady a ticket, since he did not see any colored cops nearby to call to protect him.
Langston Hughes (The Return of Simple)
Cordelia – “Why so rough?” Aral – “It’s very poor. It was the town center during the time Isolation. And it hasn’t been touched by renovation, minimal water, no electricity choked with refuse.” “Mostly human,” added Peoter tartly. “Poor?” Asked Cordelia bewildered. “No electricity? How can it be on the comm network?” “It’s not of course,” answered Vorkosigan. “Then how can anyone get their schooling?” Cordelia “They don’t.” Cordelia stared. “I don’t understand, how do they get their jobs?” “A few escape to the service, the rest prey on each other mostly.” Vorkosigan regarded her face uneasily. “Have you no poverty on Beta colony?” “Poverty? Well some people have more money than others, but no comm consuls…?” Vorkosigan was diverted from his interrogation. “Is not owning a comm consul the lowest standard of living you can imagine?” He said in wonder. “It’s the first article in the constitution! ‘Access to information shall not be abridged.’” “Cordelia, these people barely have access to food, clothing and shelter. They have a few rags and cooking pots and squat in buildings that aren’t economical to repair or tear down yet with the wind whistling through the walls.” “No air conditioning?” “No heat in the winter is a bigger problem here.” “I suppose so. You people don’t really have summer. How do they call for help when they are sick or hurt?” “What help?” Vorkosigan was growing grim. “If they’re sick they either get well or die.” “Die if we’re lucking” muttered Veoter. “You’re not joking.” She stared back and forth between the pair of them. “Why, think of all the geniuses you must missing!” “I doubt we must be missing very many from the Caravanceri.” Said Peoter dryly. “Why not? They have the same genetic compliment as you.” Cordelia pointed out the – to her -obvious. The Count went rigid. “My dear girl, they most certainly do not. My family has been Vor for nine generations.” Cordelia raised her eyebrows. “How do you know if you didn’t have the gene-typing until 80 years ago?” Both the guard commander and the footman were acquiring peculiar stuffed expressions. The footman bit his lip. “Besides,” she pointed out reasonably, “If you Vor got around half as much as those histories I’ve been reading imply. 90% of the people on this planet must have Vor blood by now. Who knows who your relatives are on your father’s side. Vorkosigan bit his napkin absently. His eyes gone crinkly with much the same expression as the footman and muttered, “Cordelia, you really can’t sit at the breakfast table and imply my ancestors were bastards. It’s a mortal insult here.” “Where should I sit? Oh I’ll never understand.
Lois McMaster Bujold (Barrayar (Vorkosigan Saga, #7))
So, I took my 13 year-old niece Sungazing last night. I'm finding that most people are really receptive to it! I explain the whole thing about the Sun's energy entering to heal and grow you like it does a tree. Even though I'm doing 5-6 mins, I make sure that everyone only does 15-20 secs to start, and at Sunset only. If the clouds come in at Sunset, you might be out of luck. In that case, still do your 45-min barefoot walk during bright Sun hours. The Sun soaks in through your Crown and Third-Eye Chakras and your eyes, then travels down through you into the Earth. That helps with the grounding, as does the barefoot walking. My feet are really sore though, some of the paths are pebbly or rocky, but the feet are getting tougher. Did you know that each of our toes relates directly to the 5 major glands in our bodies? It's true, look into acupressure/puncture for the details.
Sienna McQuillen
How old am I? Over thirty, indeed? What cream do I use on my face? How many children do I have? Really—none? They offer condolences and smack their lips over my bad luck. My husband’s family must be very upset—I am married, of course? No? Again, they offer their regrets: a great shame that nobody wanted me. They understand—it is known to happen to some girls. Usually the very ugly or poor ones. Their concern extends to my parents: They must be unhappy, ashamed even, to have an old, unmarried daughter. And the relatives, horribly embarrassed, certainly? By now, I try to insist it may not be a complete disaster to be unmarried, but Setareh feels the need to intervene and freestyle the translation a little. She explains to the girls that, in her personal view, it is indeed a little tragic for my family. That concession renders sympathetic faces all around.When Sakina steps out of the room, questions become juicier: In the West, do I walk around almost naked in the streets? And have I “had relations” with a thousand men?
Jenny Nordberg (The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan)
exulansis n. the tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it—whether through envy or pity or mere foreignness—which allows it to drift away from the rest of your story, until it feels out of place, almost mythical, wandering restlessly in the fog, no longer even looking for a place to land. Latin exulans, exile, wanderer, derived from the Latin name of the Wandering Albatross, diomedea exulans, who spend most of their life in flight, rarely landing, going hours without even flapping their wings. The albatross is a symbol of good luck, a curse, and a burden, and sometimes all three at once. Pronounced “ek-suh-lan-sis.” la cuna n. a twinge of sadness that there’s no frontier left, that as the last explorer trudged his armies toward the last blank spot on the map, he didn’t suddenly turn for home, leaving one last island unexplored so we could set it aside as a strategic reserve of mystery. Latin lacuna, an unfilled space or hole + Spanish la cuna, cradle. Pronounced “lah koo-nuh.
John Koenig (The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows)
This other Lucy is nothing like the demure, sweet victim of the hagiographies or the pure, white vision I’ve just seen outside the cathedral. Instead, on 13 December, she is said to ride through the skies with a cavalcade of the dead, of ghosts and, sometimes, of children who died while still unbaptised. Going house to house with her terrifying entourage, she looks for the food that has been left out for her. If all is well, she’ll eat the offerings and bring good fortune in return, and if she encounters any good children on her way she gives them treats. But if the food offerings are incorrect or forgotten, and if Lucy finds that the tasks of the household – especially those related to weaving – have not been finished and laid aside for her celebration, she brings disorder, bad luck and death. If she finds children who have misbehaved, she’ll gut them, pull out their organs, stuff them full of straw, and sew them back up again. Sometimes she’s depicted holding a distaff with a child’s intestines twined around it, an impressive combining of the normally very separate interests of cloth-making and disembowelling.
Sarah Clegg (The Dead of Winter: Beware the Krampus and Other Wicked Christmas Creatures)
was my first indication that the policies of Mamaw’s “party of the working man”—the Democrats—weren’t all they were cracked up to be. Political scientists have spent millions of words trying to explain how Appalachia and the South went from staunchly Democratic to staunchly Republican in less than a generation. Some blame race relations and the Democratic Party’s embrace of the civil rights movement. Others cite religious faith and the hold that social conservatism has on evangelicals in that region. A big part of the explanation lies in the fact that many in the white working class saw precisely what I did, working at Dillman’s. As far back as the 1970s, the white working class began to turn to Richard Nixon because of a perception that, as one man put it, government was “payin’ people who are on welfare today doin’ nothin’! They’re laughin’ at our society! And we’re all hardworkin’ people and we’re gettin’ laughed at for workin’ every day!”20 At around that time, our neighbor—one of Mamaw and Papaw’s oldest friends—registered the house next to ours for Section 8. Section 8 is a government program that offers low-income residents a voucher to rent housing. Mamaw’s friend had little luck renting his property, but when he qualified his house for the Section 8 voucher, he virtually assured that would change. Mamaw saw it as a betrayal, ensuring that “bad” people would move into the neighborhood and drive down property values. Despite our efforts to draw bright lines between the working and nonworking poor, Mamaw and I recognized that we shared a lot in common with those whom we thought gave our people a bad name. Those Section 8 recipients looked a lot like us. The matriarch of the first family to move in next door was born in Kentucky but moved north at a young age as her parents sought a better life. She’d gotten involved with a couple of men, each of whom had left her with a child but no support. She was nice, and so were her kids. But the drugs and the late-night fighting revealed troubles that too many hillbilly transplants knew too well. Confronted with such a realization of her own family’s struggle, Mamaw grew frustrated and angry. From that anger sprang Bonnie Vance the social policy expert: “She’s a lazy whore, but she wouldn’t be if she was forced to get a job”; “I hate those fuckers for giving these people the money to move into our neighborhood.” She’d rant against the people we’d see in the grocery store: “I can’t understand why people who’ve worked all their lives scrape by while these deadbeats buy liquor and cell phone coverage with our tax money.
J.D. Vance (Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis)
Unluckier still was Guillaume Le Gentil, whose experiences are wonderfully summarized by Timothy Ferris in Coming of Age in the Milky Way . Le Gentil set off from France a year ahead of time to observe the transit (of Venus) from India, but various setbacks left him still at sea on the day of the transit—just about the worst place to be since steady measurements were impossible on a pitching ship. Undaunted, Le Gentil continued on to India to await the next transit in 1769. With eight years to prepare, he erected a first-rate viewing station, tested and retested his instruments, and had everything in a state of perfect readiness. On the morning of the second transit, June 4, 1769, he awoke to a fine day, but, just as Venus began its pass, a cloud slid in front of the Sun and remained there for almost exactly the duration of the transit: three hours, fourteen minutes, and seven seconds. Stoically, Le Gentil packed up his instruments and set off for the nearest port, but en route he contracted dysentery and was laid up for nearly a year. Still weakened, he finally made it onto a ship. It was nearly wrecked in a hurricane off the African coast. When at last he reached home, eleven and a half years after setting off, and having achieved nothing, he discovered that his relatives had had him declared dead in his absence and had enthusiastically plundered his estate
Bill Bryson
follow you. If you used a time machine to send a modern scientist to ancient Egypt, she would not be able to seize power by exposing the fictions of the local priests and lecturing the peasants on evolution, relativity and quantum physics. Of course, if our scientist could use her knowledge in order to produce a few rifles and artillery pieces, she could gain a huge advantage over pharaoh and the crocodile god Sobek. Yet in order to mine iron ore, build blast furnaces and manufacture gunpowder the scientist would need a lot of hard-working peasants. Do you really think she could inspire them by explaining that energy divided by mass equals the speed of light squared? If you happen to think so, you are welcome to travel to present-day Afghanistan or Syria and try your luck. Really powerful human organisations – such as pharaonic Egypt, the European empires and the modern school system – are not necessarily clear-sighted. Much of their power rests on their ability to force their fictional beliefs on a submissive reality. That’s the whole idea of money, for example. The government makes worthless pieces of paper, declares them to be valuable and then uses them to compute the value of everything else. The government has the power to force citizens to pay taxes using these pieces of paper, so the citizens have no choice but to get their hands on at least some of them. Consequently, these bills really do become valuable, the government officials are vindicated in their beliefs, and since the government controls the issuing of paper money, its power grows. If somebody protests that ‘These are just worthless pieces of paper!’ and behaves as if they are only pieces of paper, he won’t get very far in life.
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow)
I know you’ve had some bad luck recently, but there’s this guy, he plays for New York, they’re looking at trading him—” “Buck, I don’t want to date another hockey player.” I set down my controller so I can shovel more of the sundae into my mouth, uncaring of the suffering that will follow this frozen dairy heaven. “Not all of us are dogs, Violet. Randall’s a great guy.” “His name is Randall. How awesome can he be?” Buck mows down a group of people playing road hockey. “He goes by Randy.” “Even better. His name is another word for horny. Sounds perfect for me.” I’m not sure if I should laugh or cry. It’s not Randall’s fault his parents named him in relation to horniness. I can’t even entertain the idea of dating anyone else right now. Besides, I could never get serious with a hockey player again, or a dude named Randy. I’d make thrusting motions every time I said his name. It’d be awkward. “Wait a minute. Didn’t Alex get suspended for kicking the shit out of some guy named Randy?” I’m almost positive this is the case. “That was Randolph Cockburn. This is Randy Balls.” “Are you serious?” What’s with these guys with terrible last names? “Yeah, why?” Buck, my perverted stepbrother, doesn’t connect the outlandishly pornographic last name with the first name. “Randy Balls?” I burst out laughing. “You want to set me up with a guy named Randy Balls? Can you even imagine what would happen if we got married? My last name would be Balls. Violet Balls!” “Huh.” He makes a scrunchy face. “That wouldn’t be so good, would it? ’Specially if you hyphenated. Hall-Balls.” I continue to laugh until I start crying, which turns into hysterical, desperate sobs. I don’t want to end up as Violet Balls. I wanted to be Violet Waters—it sounds so romantic—and Alex ruined it all. My life sucks Randy’s balls.
Helena Hunting (Pucked (Pucked, #1))
Regret can improve decisions. To begin understanding regret’s ameliorative properties, imagine the following scenario. During the pandemic of 2020–21, you hastily purchased a guitar, but you never got around to playing it. Now it’s taking up space in your apartment—and you could use a little cash. So, you decide to sell it. As luck would have it, your neighbor Maria is in the market for a used guitar. She asks how much you want for your instrument. Suppose you bought the guitar for $500. (It’s acoustic.) No way you can charge Maria that much for a used item. It would be great to get $300, but that seems steep. So, you suggest $225 with the plan to settle for $200. When Maria hears your $225 price, she accepts instantly, then hands you your money. Are you feeling regret? Probably. Many people do, even more so in situations with stakes greater than the sale of a used guitar. When others accept our first offer without hesitation or pushback, we often kick ourselves for not asking for more.[2] However, acknowledging one’s regrets in such situations—inviting, rather than repelling, this aversive emotion—can improve our decisions in the future. For example, in 2002, Adam Galinsky, now at Columbia University, and three other social psychologists studied negotiators who’d had their first offer accepted. They asked these negotiators to rate how much better they could have done if only they’d made a higher offer. The more they regretted their decision, the more time they spent preparing for a subsequent negotiation.[3] A related study by Galinsky, University of California, Berkeley’s, Laura Kray, and Ohio University’s Keith Markman found that when people look back at previous negotiations and think about what they regretted not doing—for example, not extending a strong first offer—they made better decisions in later negotiations. What’s more, these regret-enhanced decisions spread the benefits widely. During their subsequent encounters, regretful negotiators expanded the size of the pie and secured themselves a larger slice. The very act of contemplating what they hadn’t done previously widened the possibilities of what they could do next and provided a script for future interactions.[4]
Daniel H. Pink (The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward)
What’ll it be?” Steve asked me, just days after our wedding. “Do we go on the honeymoon we’ve got planned, or do you want to go catch crocs?” My head was still spinning from the ceremony, the celebration, and the fact that I could now use the two words “my husband” and have them mean something real. The four months between February 2, 1992--the day Steve asked me to marry him--and our wedding day on June 4 had been a blur. Steve’s mother threw us an engagement party for Queensland friends and family, and I encountered a very common theme: “We never thought Steve would get married.” Everyone said it--relatives, old friends, and schoolmates. I’d smile and nod, but my inner response was, Well, we’ve got that in common. And something else: Wait until I get home and tell everybody I am moving to Australia. I knew what I’d have to explain. Being with Steve, running the zoo, and helping the crocs was exactly the right thing to do. I knew with all my heart and soul that this was the path I was meant to travel. My American friends--the best, closest ones--understood this perfectly. I trusted Steve with my life and loved him desperately. One of the first challenges was how to bring as many Australian friends and family as possible over to the United States for the wedding. None of us had a lot of money. Eleven people wound up making the trip from Australia, and we held the ceremony in the big Methodist church my grandmother attended. It was more than a wedding, it was saying good-bye to everyone I’d ever known. I invited everybody, even people who may not have been intimate friends. I even invited my dentist. The whole network of wildlife rehabilitators came too--four hundred people in all. The ceremony began at eight p.m., with coffee and cake afterward. I wore the same dress that my older sister Bonnie had worn at her wedding twenty-seven years earlier, and my sister Tricia wore at her wedding six years after that. The wedding cake had white frosting, but it was decorated with real flowers instead of icing ones. Steve had picked out a simple ring for me, a quarter carat, exactly what I wanted. He didn’t have a wedding ring. We were just going to borrow one for the service, but we couldn’t find anybody with fingers that were big enough. It turned out that my dad’s wedding ring fitted him, and that’s the one we used. Steve’s mother, Lyn, gave me a silk horseshoe to put around my wrist, a symbol of good luck. On our wedding day, June 4, 1992, it had been eight months since Steve and I first met. As the minister started reading the vows, I could see that Steve was nervous. His tuxedo looked like it was strangling him. For a man who was used to working in the tropics, he sure looked hot. The church was air-conditioned, but sweat drops formed on the ends of his fingers. Poor Steve, I thought. He’d never been up in front of such a big crowd before. “The scariest situation I’ve ever been in,” Steve would say later of the ceremony. This from a man who wrangled crocodiles! When the minister invited the groom to kiss the bride, I could feel all Steve’s energy, passion, and love. I realized without a doubt we were doing the right thing.
Terri Irwin (Steve & Me)
We chose not to discuss a world warmed beyond two degrees out of decency, perhaps; or simple fear; or fear of fearmongering; or technocratic faith, which is really market faith; or deference to partisan debates or even partisan priorities; or skepticism about the environmental Left of the kind I'd always had; or disinterest in the fates of distant ecosystems like I'd also always had. We felt confusion about the science and its many technical terms and hard-to-parse numbers, or at least an intuition that others would e easily confused about the science and its many technical terms and hard-to-parse numbers. we suffered from slowness apprehending the speed of change, or semi-conspiratorial confidence in the responsibility of global elites and their institutions, or obeisance toward those elites and their institutions, whatever we thought of them. Perhaps we felt unable to really trust scarier projections because we'd only just heard about warming, we thought, and things couldn't possibly have gotten that much worse just since the first Inconvenient Truth; or because we liked driving our cars and eating our beef and living as we did in every other way and didn't want to think too hard about that; or because we felt so "postindustrial" we couldn't believe we were still drawing material breaths from fossil fuel furnaces. Perhaps it was because we were so sociopathically good at collating bad news into a sickening evolving sense of what constituted "normal," or because we looked outside and things seemed still okay. Because we were bored with writing, or reading, the same story again and again, because climate was so global and therefore nontribal it suggested only the corniest politics, because we didn't yet appreciate how fully it would ravage our lives, and because, selfishly, we didn't mind destroying the planet for others living elsewhere on it or those not yet born who would inherit it from us, outraged. Because we had too much faith in the teleological shape of history and the arrow of human progress to countenance the idea that the arc of history would bend toward anything but environmental justice, too. Because when we were being really honest with ourselves we already thought of the world as a zero-sum resource competition and believed that whatever happened we were probably going to continue to be the victors, relatively speaking anyway, advantages of class being what they are and our own luck in the natalist lottery being what it was. Perhaps we were too panicked about our own jobs and industries to fret about the future of jobs and industry; or perhaps we were also really afraid of robots or were too busy looking at our new phones; or perhaps, however easy we found the apocalypse reflex in our culture and the path of panic in our politics, we truly had a good-news bias when it came to the big picture; or, really, who knows why-there are so many aspects to the climate kaleidoscope that transforms our intuitions about environmental devastation into n uncanny complacency that it can be hard to pull the whole picture of climate distortion into focus. But we simply wouldn't, or couldn't, or anyway didn't look squarely in the face of science.
David Wallace-Wells (The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming)
Tokyo boasts similar food theme parks devoted to ramen, gyōza, ice cream, and desserts. If you don't like takoyaki, you're not entirely out of luck: the stand we visited, Aizuya, also offers radioyaki. You would think radioyaki would mean "takoyaki that grows arms and legs after exposure to nuclear radiation," but no, it replaces the octopus with konnyaku and beef gristle. Konnyaku is a noncaloric gelatin made from the root of a plant closely related to the stinking corpseflower.
Matthew Amster-Burton (Pretty Good Number One: An American Family Eats Tokyo)
Poetry Reading To be a boxer, or not to be there at all. O Muse, where are our teeming crowds? Twelve people in the room, eight seats to spare— it’s time to start this cultural affair. Half came inside because it started raining, the rest are relatives. O Muse. The women here would love to rant and rave, but that’s for boxing. Here they must behave. Dante’s Inferno is ringside nowadays. Likewise his Paradise. O Muse. Oh, not to be a boxer but a poet, one sentenced to hard shelleying for life, for lack of muscles forced to show the world the sonnet that may make the high-school reading lists with luck. O Muse, O bobtailed angel, Pegasus. In the first row, a sweet old man’s soft snore: he dreams his wife’s alive again. What’s more, she’s making him that tart she used to bake. Aflame, but carefully—don’t burn his cake!— we start to read. O Muse.
Wisława Szymborska (Map: Collected and Last Poems)
The entire notion of biography is grounded in the arbitrary ascription of a causal relation between specified traits and subsequent events. Now consider the cemetery. The graveyard of failed persons will be full of people who shared the following traits: courage, risk taking, optimism, et cetera. Just like the population of millionaires. There may be some differences in skills, but what truly separates the two is for the most part a single factor: luck. Plain luck.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Incerto, #2))
Guilt feelings can cause people to experience severe depression after they have been successful in some work or personal project. Chronic bad luck accidents or impoverished social relations can stem from self-imposed guilt.
Marsha Sinetar (Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow: Discovering Your Right Livelihood)
In the small, neat back bedroom Ari Nikolev watched as his daughter packed her suitcase with the dreariest, drabbest clothes in her closet. At his suggestion. ‘I know men,’ he’d said, when she’d protested. ‘But men won’t find me attractive in these.’ She’d jabbed her finger at the pile of clothes. ‘I thought you said you wanted Gamache to like me.’ ‘Not to date. Believe me, he’ll like you in those.’ As she turned to find her toiletry bag he slipped a couple of butterscotch candies into the suitcase, where she’d find them that night. And think of him. And with any luck never realize he had his own little secret. There was no Uncle Saul. No slaughter at the hands of the communists. No noble and valiant flight across the frontier. He’d made all that up years ago to shut up his wife’s relatives camped in their home. It was his lifeboat, made of words, which had kept him afloat on their sea of misery and suffering. Genuine suffering. Even he could admit that. But he’d needed his own stories of heroics and survival. And so, after helping to conceive little Angelina and then Yvette, he’d conceived Uncle Saul. Whose job it was to save the family, and who had failed. Saul’s spectacular fall from grace had cost Ari his entire fictional family. He knew he should tell Yvette. Knew that what had started as his own life raft had become an anchor for his little girl. But she worshipped him, and Ari Nikolev craved that
Louise Penny (A Fatal Grace (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #2))
When you ask around town for me, telling people we’re related, you’re asking for trouble,” Sopona explained. “It was no such thing as bad luck. There’s no coincidence you stumbled in
Laurențiu M. Badea (Embers of Atlanta)
When you ask around town for me, telling people we’re related, you’re asking for trouble,” Sopona explained. “It was no such thing as bad luck.
Laurențiu M. Badea (Embers of Atlanta)
Perhaps the most important idea is that the rate of reversion to the mean relates to the coefficient of correlation. If the correlation between two variables is 1.0, there is no reversion to the mean. If the correlation is 0, the best guess about what the next outcome will be is simply the average. In other words, when there's no correlation between what you do and what happens, you'll see total reversion to the mean. That's why there's always a small expected loss when you play roulette, whether you've just lost or won chips. Simply having a sense of the correlations for various events can help guide us in making predictions.
Michael J. Mauboussin (The Success Equation: Untangling Skill and Luck in Business, Sports, and Investing)
Money and looks are Ok to an extent to lure women, but better realise that it’s the luck that enables one to lay them. Why, you can’t even screw a whore if you’re not destined to have her for your visit to the brothel would’ve coincided with her periods, and the next time you’re eager, she could’ve shifted out of the town itself.
B.S. Murthy (Benign Flame: Saga of Love)
Some readers—and many who haven’t read the book—argue that I have talked too much out of school, and by exposing the behind-the-scenes machinations of a church and its search committee, I have disclosed too many secrets, certainly more than the average credulous churchgoer cares to know. I believe that the more the average credulous churchgoer knows, the more responsible their decisions will be when choosing a leader. The health and future of their institution depend on it. A church is a human structure. We build it and inhabit it, and immediately stories and secrets abound within. It is my hope that the stories and secrets related in these pages continue to entertain and, with luck, enlighten.
Michelle Huneven (Search)
Social cachet has value to her, and I’ve lucked into a winning friend group, one worthy of Maura Weston. Though a part of me wonders if that’s precisely why. Perhaps the only reason I was invited to that lunch table is because of who I’m related to. Even more reason to leave this town as quickly as possible.
Alexa Donne (Pretty Dead Queens)
With enough fat stored away, the fat cells essentially get full; once you are an adolescent, the number of fat cells you have is fixed, so if you put on weight, the individual fat cells are distended. Yet another heavy meal, a burst of insulin trying to promote more fat storage by the fat cells, and the fat cells refuse—“Tough luck, I don’t care if you are insulin; we’re completely full.” No room at the inn.
Robert M. Sapolsky (Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping)
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Mama Sabot
SANGOMA IN Burgersfort & Jane furse[[+27°81°874°4558]].⓶BEST & GIFTED-TRADITIONAL HEALER IN MANKWENG, POLOKWANE,Loius Trichardt,Seshego, Lebowakgomo, Tzaneen,Lephalale,Bochum, Phalaborwa, Musina, Modimolle, Zebediela, Giyani, Mankweng, Senwabarwana, Dendron, Thohoyandou, Elim, Loius Trichardt, Botlokwa, Bela Bela, Naboom.MAMA PEACE&BABAMULO +27818744558 AM A TRADITIONAL HERBALIST HEALER / SANGOMA/ A SPELL CASTER AND A SPIRITUAL HEALER FROM THE MOUNTAINS OF KENYA . AM VERY GOOD WHEN IT COMES TO CASTING SPELLS, BRINGING BACK YOUR EX, STOP CHEATING PARTNERS AND FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO GET MARRIED, STOP COURT CASES AND DIVORCE, CLEANSING YOU FROM BAD LUCK AND AFFECTED HOMES, I HAVE A SPECIAL HERB FOR YOU WOMEN WHO BADLY NEED CHILDREN AND YOU HAVE FAILED TO GET PREGNANT. MEN WHO CAN’T PERFORM AND YOUR WEAK / SMALL IN SIZE COME FOR MY SUPER BOASTER AND BECOME A WARRIOR IN BED MATTERS. WHEN FRIENDS FAMILY RELATIVES AND IN LAWS ARE BECOMING A PROBLEM TO YOU COME AND I SORT THEM OUT FOR YOU IMMEDIATELY. I CAN TREAT DISEASES IN YOUNGER CHILDREN AND THE VERY OLD PEOPLE WITH PAINS AND BODY SORES. I CAN STOP YOUR MAN / WIFE FROM SMOKING AND DRINKING IMMEDIATELY. LOOKING FOR A JOB OR PROMOTION AND FAVOUR FROM YOUR EMPLOYER PLEASE SEE ME AND YOU SHALL COME BACK WITH A SMILE. AM A MATURE PAESON WITH EXPERIENCE SO I DEAL WITH SERIOUS MATURE PEOPLE. IF YOU HAVE BEEN BADLY AFFECTED BY VARIOUS HEALER WITHOUT GETTING HELP AND THOSE WITH UNFINISHED JOBS COME AND I WIPE YOUR TEARS. I PROFESSOR PEACE I CAN CAST A SPELL ANYWERE IN THE WORLD AND I WORK ON YOU FROM ANY PLACE YOU ARE IMMEDIATELY.CALL OR WHATSAPP MULO ON NB CONSULTATION / COUNSELING AND MINER TREATMENT ARE ALL Free +27818744558 PROFESSOR MAMA PEACE AM A TRADITIONAL HERBALIST HEALER / SANGOMA/ A SPELL CASTER AND A SPIRITUAL HEALER FROM THE MOUNTAINS OF KENYA . AM VERY GOOD WHEN IT COMES TO CASTING SPELLS, BRINGING BACK YOUR EX, STOP CHEATING PARTNERS AND FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO GET MARRIED, STOP COURT CASES AND DIVORCE, CLEANSING YOU FROM BAD LUCK AND AFFECTED HOMES, I HAVE A SPECIAL HERB FOR YOU WOMEN WHO BADLY NEED CHILDREN AND YOU HAVE FAILED TO GET PREGNANT. MEN WHO CANT PERFORM AND YOUR WEAK / SMALL IN SIZE COME FOR MY SUPER BOASTER AND BECOME A WARRIOR IN BED MATTERS. WHEN FRIENDS FAMILY RELATIVES AND IN LAWS ARE BECOMING A PROBLEM TO YOU COME AN PROFESSOR MAMA PEACE&BABA MULO +27818744558 AM A TRADITIONAL HERBALIST PEACE +27818744558 AM A TRADITIONAL HERBALIST HEALER / SANGOMA/ A SPELL CASTER AND A SPIRITUAL HEALER FROM THE MOUNTAINS OF KENYA. AM VERY GOOD WHEN IT COMES TO CASTING SPELLS, BRINGING BACK YOUR EX, STOP CHEATING PARTNERS AND FOR THOSE WITH UNFINISHED JOBS COME AND I WIPE YOUR TEARS. I MAMA PEACE I CAN CAST A SPELL ANYWERE IN THE WORLD AND I WORK ON YOU FROM ANY PLACE YOU ARE IMMEDIATELY.CALL OR WHATSAPP MAMA PEACE &BABA MULO ON NB CONSULTATION / COUNSELING AND MINER TREATMENT ARE ALL Free +27818744558
Mama Sabot
While one could argue that those who engage in risky behavior are aware of the risks, perhaps we could all learn a lesson from this Horror. My goal is to strip away the “rose-colored glasses,” the euphemisms and the positive “self-talk” we use to avoid reality. Optimism Bias is real and there is a very interesting TED talk (ideas worth spreading) by Tali Sharot on this topic. Overestimating our ability or good luck is a fascinating concept and relates to all the Unthinkable Horrors as well as to Addictive Behaviors. Sometimes a little skepticism is a good thing.
I.M. Probulos (The 12 Unthinkable Horrors of Human Existence: A Manual for Atheists, Agnostics and Secular Humanists)
I’ll be hanged if I can understand how it concerns Evolution to get us out of a mere scrape.” “Out of all kinds of scrapes, my dear Brumm, Evolution has the power to deliver us. There is no conceivable scrape which is not a link in the great chain—in Chance, which is the empirical name for Evolution, and bears the same relation to it that alchemy bears to chemistry, and astrology to astronomy. And the last little scrape of all, death, is simply the charming means Evolution takes to get us out of the great big scrape, life. You will never be happy, my dear friend, until you submit to the Evolutionary will. If it were not so amusing, nothing would be more insufferable than the unanimity and persistency with which all men and kindreds and nations shout up into space, ‘What a scrape were in!’ It is the first thing the child says in its inarticulate way with the first breath of air it is able to employ. ‘Oh, what a scrape to be sure!’ And it is the last thing the man feels on his death-bed. And you will find that all the books and newspapers and music in the world are only expositions and sermons and fugues and variations on the one theme. ‘Oh, what a scrape!’ Now, it is my mission to change the world’s tune. I mean to teach it that scrape, luck, chance, is law, is Evolution, is the soul of the universe; and having brought man’s will into accord with the Evolutionary will, in a very short time it will come about that children will laugh with their first breath, as much as to say, ‘ What a delightful thing it is to come into the world.’ And on their death-beds men will cry, ‘How refreshing and noble it is to pass away,’ while all the books and newspapers and music of the world will cease to be a mere complaint, will cease—altogether, the books and newspapers, perhaps, and only glad music remain.
John Davidson (A Full and True Account of the Wonderful Mission of Earl Lavender, which Lasted One Night and One Day; with a History of the Pursuit of Earl Lavender and Lord Brumm by Mrs. Scamler and Maud Emblem)
He ran his hand into her long, brown hair and then caressed her cheek. She was so beautiful and so broken. He understood broken. He related to it like no other could. He’d spent his life in a constant state of falling to pieces, held together by sheer willpower and luck. Deep down he knew they were right for one another. That two brokens could make a whole.
Mandy M. Roth (Act of Submission (Immortal Ops: PSI-Ops, #3))
Some would call that lucky but lucky is relative
Nadia Hashimi (When the Moon is Low)
Despite initial enthusiasm from Page’s distributors, as an overall category, innerwear remained a low-profile product in retail stores. This would ultimately necessitate a high-pitched, pan-India advertising campaign from Page, but the costs were prohibitive. Competitive intensity from incumbents had already increased substantially during 1995–2000. When the company reached sales of Rs 21 crore in FY2000, Rupa and Maxwell were already at Rs 150 crore each. One level above them, in the mid-premium segment, brands like Liberty, Libertina and Tantex (TTK Tantex) were firmly ensconced. Associated Apparels (Liberty and Libertina) reported sales of Rs 100 crore during the same period. In a stroke of luck for Page, both TTK Tantex and Associated Apparels fell prey to labour strikes. TTK Tantex saw labour-related plant shutdowns in 1997 that lasted for two years, sending the company’s revenues into a steady descent (see Exhibit 55). The TTK Group had twenty companies across many sectors and, due to lack of management bandwidth to handle the crisis, sold the innerwear brand in FY02. In the same year, Associated Apparels had a labour strike in one of its factories that disrupted its supply chain. The exit of both TTK Tantex and the crippling of Associated Apparels played into Page’s hands as all the large innerwear retailers (dealers) in northern and western India shifted to Jockey.
Saurabh Mukherjea (The Unusual Billionaires)
I've grown to think that keeping your desk clean is actually probably a sign that you're not being effective.
Joel Spolsky (More Joel on Software: Further Thoughts on Diverse and Occasionally Related Matters That Will Prove of Interest to Software Developers, Designers, and ... Ill Luck, Work with Them in Some Capacity)
the demon of fear of events, with its fur bristling in anticipation of a caress; the demon of worldly piety, which lifts itself up by creeping like ivy; the demon of proud science, hiding its horns beneath a university mortarboard; the demon of quick-tempered strength that is incapable of enduring the least vexation; the demon of bad counsel, that tells you all the tricks by which to climb the rungs of hell; the demon of artificial intelligence, that believes that thought is perfected not in praise but in calculation; the demon of the wisdom of spirituality websites, which provide you with “well-being, interior freedom, harmony, and serenity in everyday life” by assuring you that you are the reincarnation of an empress and that your boss is only an illusion. Our Mary, who is neither a saint nor a virgin, had all it would take to succeed in high society. No such luck, or perhaps by the grace of God, whichever you prefer: there she was, deprived of the seven keys to success and commanded by the Risen Lord to relate an impossible story to a bunch of dullards. To
Fabrice Hadjadj (The Resurrection: Experience Life in the Risen Christ)
The epitome of empathy is said to be the capacity to look at the world through another's eyes. Though our glance on the planet is largely distorted by our crooked perspectives, we may nevertheless, with luck or agility, accede to a privileged glimpse of the view from another's shoes - and in the process claim to have been able, for a moment at least, to surmount our relativity.
Alain de Botton (Kiss & Tell)
As we try to learn from the past, we form patterns of thinking based on our experiences, not realizing that the things that happened have an unfair advantage over the things that didn’t. In other words, we can’t see the alternatives that might well have happened if not for some small chance event. When a bad thing happens, people will draw conclusions that might include conspiracy or forces acting against them or, conversely, if a good thing happens, that they are brilliant and deserving. But these kinds of misperceptions ultimately deceive us. And this has consequences in business—and for the way we manage. When companies are successful, it is natural to assume that this is a result of leaders making shrewd decisions. Those leaders go forward believing that they have figured out the key to building a thriving company. In fact, randomness and luck played a key role in that success. If you run a business that is covered with any frequency by the media, you may face another challenge. Journalists tend to look for patterns that can be explained in a relatively small number of words. If you haven’t done the work of teasing apart what is random and what you have intentionally set in motion, you will be overly influenced by the analysis of outside observers, which is often oversimplified. When managing a company that is often in the news, as Pixar is, we must be careful not to believe our own hype. I say this knowing that it is difficult to resist, especially when we are flying high and tempted to think we have done everything right. But the truth is, I have no way of accounting for all of the factors involved in any given success, and whenever I learn more, I have to revise what I think. That’s not a weakness or a flaw. That’s reality.
Ed Catmull (Creativity, Inc.: an inspiring look at how creativity can - and should - be harnessed for business success by the founder of Pixar)
There is no fortuity in the Wright brothers’ saga as related by McCullough, no unexpected events that changed their course. Except for Orville’s startling emergence from a horrible wreck during one of his flights, there’s not even any luck. Neither brother attended college, nor had been trained in physics or engineering, yet each step they took was not only correct but in many cases brilliant, and in nearly all cases original. That every one of those steps was also achieved through excruciating patience and obsessive attention to detail does not diminish the only word that can express what Wilbur, particularly, possessed: genius.
Anonymous
There’s an awful lot of luck relative to skill. Investing is 95% luck and 5% skill.
Anthony Robbins (MONEY Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom (Tony Robbins Financial Freedom))
Jobs Theory helps innovators identify the full picture of the progress a customer is trying to make in particular circumstances, including the complex set of competing needs and relative priorities. You have to understand not only what customers want to hire, but what they’ll need to fire to make room for the new solution. All that context matters profoundly.
Clayton M. Christensen (Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice)
They give luck a chance. Innovation happens when people are free to think, experiment and speculate. It happens when people can trade with each other. It happens where people are relatively prosperous, not desperate. It is somewhat contagious
Matt Ridley (How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom)
So you’re sprinting down the street with the lion after you. Things looked grim for a moment there, but—your good luck—your cardiovascular system kicked into gear, and now it is delivering oxygen and energy to your exercising muscles. But what energy? There’s not enough time to consume a candy bar and derive its benefits as you sprint along; there’s not even enough time to digest food already in the gut. Your body must get energy from its places of storage, like fat or liver or non-exercising muscle. To understand how you mobilize energy in this circumstance, and how that mobilization can make you sick at times, we need to learn how the body stores energy in the first place.
Robert M. Sapolsky (Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping)
I … sent a program of research to the Rockefeller Foundation. … [Their] questions were almost all of a surprising pertinence. I remember the practical questions … But I particularly remember the theoretical questions, due among others to [Shannon] Weaver, the mathematician interested in information theory who was then in charge of the Department of Science at the Foundation: How will you find interesting epistomological ideas, for example, the theory of relativity, in studying children who know nothing and who in any case are brought up in the intellectual tradition dating from Newton? … I had the luck to be able to remark … that Einstein himself had advised me in 1928 to study the formation of the intuitions of velocity in order to see if they depended on those of duration, and that further, when I had the good fortune to see Einstein again at Princeton …, he was quite delighted by the reactions of nonconservation of children of four to six years (they deny that a liquid conserves its quantity when it is poured from one glass into another of a different shape: ‘There is more to drink than before,‘ etc.), and was greatly astonished that the elementary concepts of conservation were only constructed toward seven or eight years.
Jean Piaget (Insights and Illusions of Philosophy: Selected Works vol 9 (Insights and Illusions of Philosophy, Volume 9))
The coast of Austria-Hungary yielded what people called cappuzzo, a leafy cabbage. It was a two-thousand-year-old grandparent of modern broccoli and cauliflower, that was neither charismatic nor particularly delicious. But something about it called to Fairchild. The people of Austria-Hungary ate it with enthusiasm, and not because it was good, but because it was there. While the villagers called it cappuzzo, the rest of the world would call it kale. And among its greatest attributes would be how simple it is to grow, sprouting in just its second season of life, and with such dense and bulky leaves that in the biggest challenge of farming it seemed to be how to make it stop growing. "The ease with which it is grown and its apparent favor among the common people this plant is worthy a trial in the Southern States," Fairchild jotted. It was prophetic, perhaps, considering his suggestion became reality. Kale's first stint of popularity came around the turn of the century, thanks to its horticultural hack: it drew salt into its body, preventing the mineralization of soil. Its next break came from its ornamental elegance---bunches of white, purple, or pink leaves that would enliven a drab garden. And then for decades, kale kept a low profile, its biggest consumers restaurants and caterers who used the cheap, bushy leaves to decorate their salad bars. Kale's final stroke of luck came sometime in the 1990s when chemists discovered it had more iron than beef, and more calcium, iron, and vitamin K than almost anything else that sprouts from soil. That was enough for it to enter the big leagues of nutrition, which invited public relations campaigns, celebrity endorsements, and morning-show cooking segments. American chefs experimented with the leaves in stews and soups, and when baked, as a substitute for potato chips. Eventually, medical researchers began to use it to counter words like "obesity," "diabetes," and "cancer." One imagines kale, a lifetime spent unnoticed, waking up one day to find itself captain of the football team.
Daniel Stone (The Food Explorer: The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats)
Vegetables. Fruits. Nuts. Seeds. Meats. Eggs. Fish. That’s it. For millions of years our ancestors survived purely from these 7 things. Typically, the women gathered the nuts, seeds, fruits, and vegetables while men hunted for meat. Together these food sources provided the necessary components of a complete diet that sustained healthy living. Climate, geography, and luck mainly determined how balanced these sources were. But remember, regardless of how much of each food they ate, these were the only foods available to our ancestors, so naturally our bodies have adapted to their consumption. It wasn’t until about ten thousand years ago, a blip in our time on Earth, with the cultivation of plants and domestication of animals, that large quantities of breads, potatoes, rice, pasta, and dairy became available. These relatively new sources of calories were the main reason our complex societies were able to develop, and our overabundance is to a large degree due to them. However, for millions of years our bodies evolved on diets without any of these. The relatively miniscule time span since the domestication of plants and animals has not prepared us to live healthy lives with diets consisting of too many breads, pastas, rice, and potatoes. Yes, life expectancy has greatly increased in this time span, but this can be attributed not to new foods, but rather to man’s no longer having to live life on-the-go while dealing with hunger, thirst, illness, injuries, extreme cold, and fighting dangerous animals with primitive tools. So think of these new calories as little more than fillers. If you find yourself overwhelmed by nutritional definitions and rules, just ask yourself this: For millions of years before the domestication of plants and animals, what did we eat?
Mark Lauren (You Are Your Own Gym: The Bible of Bodyweight Exercises)
As suggested in Chapter 1, intensive kin-based institutions demand that individuals behave in a range of different ways depending on their relationships to other people. Some relationships explicitly call for joking, while others demand quiet submission. By contrast, the world of impersonal markets and relational mobility favors consistency across contexts and relationships as well as the cultivation of unique personal characteristics specialized for diverse niches. For at least a millennium, these cultural evolutionary pressures have fostered a rising degree of dispositionalism. Individuals increasingly sought consistency—to be “themselves”—across contexts and judged others negatively when they failed to show this consistency. Understanding this helps explain why WEIRD people are so much more likely than others to impute the causes of someone’s behavior to their personal dispositions over their contexts and relationships (the Fundamental Attribution Error), and why they are so uncomfortable with their own personal inconsistencies (Cognitive Dissonance). Reacting to this culturally constructed worldview, WEIRD people are forever seeking their “true selves” (good luck!). Thus, while they certainly exist across societies and back into history, dispositions in general, and personalities specifically, are just more important in WEIRD societies.46
Joseph Henrich (The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous)
What was the cake you had ordered?" "A hazelnut sponge with vanilla-and-mango mousse. Vanilla buttercream with a fondant overlay and flowers." Ideas flowed and pinged around my brain, kicking up that heady surge of excitement and challenge once more. This I knew. This I liked. "You're feeding what? Forty?" "Forty-five. Fifty, to be safe." "You want a traditional multitier with buttercream, then we're pushing it. Especially if you expect any sort of elaborate decoration." "The cake feels cursed at this point." Delilah's scowl made me want to smile. It was as if she was personally offended by the bad luck, which I could understand. "I could do croquembouche. That's relatively quick and a crowd-pleaser. There are endless possibilities of gâteau.
Kristen Callihan (Make It Sweet)
Your potential to create wealth is found between your education on how to make money, and your willingness to live in poverty. By education on how to make money, I am referring here to the many skills you need to acquire for a job, in communication, but also organizational and ethical skills. By willingness to live in poverty, I am referring here to the sacrifices you are willing to make. You see, people fear poverty as if they could avoid it, but the one who escapes it faster, is the one who embraces it better. This means spending as less as possible in your habits, not worrying about what others think of you, and committing yourself to become a servant, even a slave, to your higher self. The reason why so many people struggle to accumulate wealth, is because they are avoiding both of these things just mentioned. They don't want to work, for themselves or others, they aren't willing to make sacrifices, they care a lot about what others think of them, they don't want to save any money, they spend without any sense of responsibility, and they also have no interest in investing on their education, either through formal means or by reading books. Most people don't read, they are waiting for the world to offer them the solutions they want, and the trust luck and shortcuts more than they trust their own capacity to achieve things with their own efforts. That's why they can't get to where they want in life. What I just said, can be applied to any other area of life. Even a good marriage requires education on how to make it work and sacrifices to make it work, and just as much as a dog will require you to sacrifice your time and learn better ways of communicating with him. Your own existence depends on a balance of an education on opportunities and a commitment to find them. So what is the most imbecile thing anyone can tell you? The most dumb persons you will ever find, are those who tell you the exact opposite of what I just said, and in doing so, separate everything in different categories. They will say that happiness doesn't require wealth, or that wealthy individuals are miserable. They will say that love requires luck, or that education isn't necessary to become successful. And you have quite a bunch of idiots in this world, marketing their foolish views on others, as if they were absolute truth. You tend to buy into such views with the love and attachment you feel for them. Thus, be wary of the merchants of incompetence. They will try to sell you the most stupid ideas about life. And if you trust them, you will fail, and keep on failing, until you realize you trusted the wrong people. If you think education is expensive, know that stupidity is a lot more. It can cost you an entire existence in the dark. The path to enlightenment is a path of integration, while the distance is measured in segregations. Stupidity is found in the relativity of everything. The dumber one is, the more he or she will think in terms of differentiations. The wiser one is, the more he or she will focus on the similarities and correlations, because enlightenment is found in an upward route towards oneness.
Dan Desmarques
Interestingly, we instinctively chase after pleasure believing it to be the source of sustainable happiness. Many of us spend most of our time and energy chasing pleasure, sometimes enjoying flow, and once in a while, we think about higher purpose. We should be doing the reverse. This is the most logical path towards sustainable happiness, at least in relation to our work.
Morten T Hansen (Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck—Why Some Thrive Despite Them All)
The Sages have considered the tefillin as amulets of divine power which could protect men. Their final shape and form, as was determined by the rabbis, is clearly taken from ancient Egypt, where a figure of a sacred snake was tied to the head as a good luck charm, and this resembles the traditional tefillin.
Eitan Bar (Rabbinic Judaism Debunked: Debunking the myth of Rabbinic Oral Law (Oral Torah) (Quick-Read Collection))
pleasure isn’t based on an absolute level of dopamine in the brain, but rather on the relative level versus the expected level of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens. Relative, not absolute.
Kristy Shen (Quit Like a Millionaire: No Gimmicks, Luck, or Trust Fund Required)
Two men are travelling together along a road. One of them believes that it leads to a Celestial City, the other that it leads nowhere; but since this is the only road there is, both must travel it. Neither has been this way before, and therefore neither is able to say what they will find around each next comer. During their journey they meet both with moments of refreshment and delight, and with moments of hardship and danger. All the time one of them thinks of his journey as a pilgrimage to the Celestial City and interprets the pleasant parts as encouragements and the obstacles as trials of his purpose and lessons in endurance, prepared by the king of that city and designed to make of him a worthy citizen of the place when at last he arrives there. The other, however, believes none of this and sees their journey as an unavoidable and aimless ramble. Since he has no choice in the matter, he enjoys the good and endures the bad. But for him there is no Celestial City to be reached, no all-encompassing purpose ordaining their journey; only the road itself and the luck of the road in good weather and in bad. During the course of the journey the issue between them is not an experimental one. They do not entertain different expectations about the corning details of the road, but only about its ultimate destination. And yet when they do turn the last corner of it will be apparent that one of them has been right all the time and the other wrong. Thus although the issue between them has not been experimental, it has nevertheless from the start been a real issue. They have not merely felt differently about the road; for one was feeling appropriately and the other inappropriately in relation to the actual state of affairs. Their opposed interpretations of the road constituted genuinely rival assertions, though assertions whose assertion-status has the peculiar characteristic of being guaranteed retrospectively by a future crux.
John Hick
Take a break, throw some water on your face, take cleansing breaths with long exhalations, go for a walk. But don't try to grapple with relational issues from your Adaptive Child. Get yourself reseated in your Wise Adult before attempting repair. Ask yourself which part of you is talking right now, and what that part's real agenda is. If your agenda in that moment is to be right, to gain control, to vent, retaliate, or withdraw - then stop, call a formal time-out if need be, and get yourself recentered. The only agenda that will work is the one about finding a solution. Only then will you have any luck using your newly cultivated sills.
Terrence Real (Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship (Goop Press))
Exercise: What Does Good Luck Feel Like? Imagine that tomorrow morning, you wake up to learn that you’ve won the lottery or inherited a huge sum of money from a relative you didn’t even know existed. Give yourself a moment to really get into this fantasy. What are you seeing, hearing, thinking? Now ask yourself these questions: How do you feel? After the initial shock has worn off, are there any other feelings mixed in with your happiness? Are all of them pleasant?
Olivia Telford (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: Simple Techniques to Instantly Be Happier, Find Inner Peace, and Improve Your Life)
It was easier to fill up the Danube Valley than to convince Mutter that the theory of luck in relation to the order of footsteps was flawed. But Mutter couldn’t be persuaded
Weina Dai Randel (Night Angels)
Can we believe that random events or events resulting from chance or luck do occur in the world—especially those with negative consequences—and also believe in divine providence? If God has a plan, how does randomness figure in?
Thomas Jay Oord (The Uncontrolling Love of God: An Open and Relational Account of Providence)
Responsibility, Agency, and the Disappearing Agent Objection Derk Pereboom I’ve argued that the objection that reveals the deepest problem for event-causal libertarianism is what I call the disappearing agent argument (Pereboom 2004, 2014, 2017). This objection has recently been the target of several illuminating criticisms, and in what follows I respond to them, thereby clarifying the nature of the argument. Other arguments against event-causal libertarianism include the present luck objection (e.g., Haji 2004, Mele 2006), and the objection that the event-causal view does not yield enhanced control relative to that available given causal determination (e.g., O’Connor 2000, Pereboom 2001, Clarke 2003).
Jean-Baptiste Guillon (Le libre arbitre: Perspectives contemporaines (French Edition))
She’d been having a series of little dinners lately. Naturally, some people got invited oftener than others. Tonight, they were having the Enderbles, an elderly couple whom everybody adored, and Timothy Ames, Peter’s most valued friend and colleague. Tim also happened to be the father of Jemmy, who had married Dave Marsh, a young relative of Helen’s. Coming to keep house for Tim after his wife had been found dead behind Peter’s sofa, she had soon deserted Ames for Shandy. Because she still had slight guilt feelings and because she’d developed a fondness for the crusty old gnome, Helen was going all out to be kind to Tim and the housekeeper whom Jemmy had bullied her father into hiring after Helen married Peter.
Charlotte MacLeod (The Luck Runs Out (Peter Shandy #2))
Chess, for all its strategic complexity, isn’t a great model for decision-making in life, where most of our decisions involve hidden information and a much greater influence of luck. This creates a challenge that doesn’t exist in chess: identifying the relative contributions of the decisions we make versus luck in how things turn out. Poker, in contrast, is a game of incomplete information. It is a game of decision-making under conditions of uncertainty over time. (Not coincidentally, that is close to the definition of game theory.) Valuable information remains hidden. There is also an element of luck in any outcome. You could make the best possible decision at every point and still lose the hand, because you don’t know what new cards will be dealt and revealed. Once the game is finished and you try to learn from the results, separating the quality of your decisions from the influence of luck is difficult.
Annie Duke (Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts)
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What very few people dared point out is that it was the bad luck of the Koreans to have suffered racial discrimination at the hands of blacks. If whites had boycotted Korean (or black-owned) stores with chants of “Let ’em die” or circulated fliers urging whites not to buy from “people who don’t look like us,” the nation would have gone into convulsions. State legislatures would have passed laws to make the boycotts illegal. The police would not have had to enforce court orders against the boycotters. They would have had to protect them from crowds of angry counterdemonstrators.
Jared Taylor (Paved With Good Intentions: The Failure of Race Relations in Contemporary America)
Bookish friends told me they’d read it as kids. Reading it now in my forties I don’t see it as a kids’ book. I’ve drawn from it all kinds of grown-up spiritual themes. The protagonist, Cassandra, a sharp minded team seeking the Something Else, asks the local priest, “And do religious people find out what it’s all about? Do they really get the answer to the riddle?” The priest replies, “They just get a whiff of an answer sometimes . . . If one ever has any luck, one will know with all one’s senses - and none of them. Probably as good a way as any of describing it is that we shall ‘come over all queer.’” “But haven’t you?” asks Cassandra (which reminded me of the same question I asked the Dali Lama in relation to quieting the mind). The priest sighs and says the whiffs are few and far between. “But the memory of them everlasting.
Sarah Wilson (First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Story About Anxiety)
Your luck surface area relates to the natural concept of entropy, which measures the amount of disorder in a system.
Gabriel Weinberg (Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models)