23
" Although she was a logical, practical person, she believed that in books there existed a kind of magic. Between the aging covers on these shelves, contained in tiny, abstract black marks on sheets of paper, were voices from the past. Voices that reached into the future, into Claire's own heart and mind, to tell her what they knew, what they'd learned, what they'd seen, what they'd felt. Wasn't that magic? "
― Christi Phillips , The Devlin Diary (Claire Donovan #2)
30
" İf you identify yourself (your Self) with your feeling, perception, mental image of your body, consciousness (subjective awareness), in short, what is going inside your brain, it would mean that your self doesn’t exist, because it cannot control none of them. All of them are automatically controlled by your brain but not by your self. None of them are permanent, all are mutable. You cannot determine what to feel or how to perceive, your brain automatically does it for you, you cannot stop the change of your body image because of aging and you cannot control which part of information should be on conscious, which should be on unconscious level of your mind, considering that more than 90% of all information is hidden from your conscious mind and you are simply not aware what is going inside your brain. That is why it is said that you are merely a bio-social robot without any self being capable of taking control of anything in your life. Your self can control almost nothing. "
― Elmar Hussein
31
" Every time we cheer the downfall of a powerful woman, we're giving ourselves the message that power is bad and we shouldn't desire it. Every time we revel in a beautiful woman's aging or weight gain, we reinforce the idea that we, too, are less valuable if we are old or overweight. Every time we gloat over a woman's loss of a husband to a younger, prettier rival, we are reminding ourselves that our own relationship is unstable, that someday our man, too, will move on to greener pastures. "
― Susan Shapiro Barash , Tripping the Prom Queen: The Truth about Women and Rivalry
34
" But we who remain shall grow old
We shall know the cold
Of cheerless
Winter and the rain of Autumn and the sting
Of poverty, of love despised and of disgraces,
And mirrors showing stained and aging faces,
And the long ranges of comfortless years
And the long gamut of human fears...
But, for you, it shall forever be spring,
And only you shall be forever fearless,
And only you have white, straight, tireless limbs,
And only you, where the water-lily swims
Shall walk along the pathways thro' the willows
Of your west.
You who went West,
and only you on silvery twilight pillows
Shall take your rest
In the soft sweet glooms
Of twilight rooms... "
― Ford Madox Ford
37
" Calcification is the hardening of body tissues by calcium salts or deposits. Although calcification itself is not considered a disease, it has been shown to be a significant contributing factor in nearly every known illness and aging condition, including heart disease, kidney stones, gallstones, chronic inflammation, arthritis, cancers, cataracts, eczema, psoriasis, and even wrinkles. "
― ,
38
" Ending up with that gigantic outsized brain must have taken some sort of runaway evolutionary process, something that would push and push without limits.
And today's scientists had a pretty good guess at what that runaway evolutionary process had been.
Harry had once read a famous book called Chimpanzee Politics. The book had described how an adult chimpanzee named Luit had confronted the aging alpha, Yeroen, with the help of a young, recently matured chimpanzee named Nikkie. Nikkie had not intervened directly in the fights between Luit and Yeroen, but had prevented Yeroen's other supporters in the tribe from coming to his aid, distracting them whenever a confrontation developed between Luit and Yeroen. And in time Luit had won, and become the new alpha, with Nikkie as the second most powerful...
...though it hadn't taken very long after that for Nikkie to form an alliance with the defeated Yeroen, overthrow Luit, and become the new new alpha.
It really made you appreciate what millions of years of hominids trying to outwit each other - an evolutionary arms race without limit - had led to in the way of increased mental capacity.
'Cause, y'know, a human would have totally seen that one coming. "
― Eliezer Yudkowsky , Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
40
" Aging offers certain rewards that youth cannot. It represents the culmination of our efforts in building self-knowledge, families, friendships, careers, and the sense of self that comes from facing whatever adversity we may have encountered. Aging is to be honored. Youth certainly has its own set of rewards, but to dwell on them to the exclusion of those that come later in life causes a stagnation of the self. It keeps us from experiencing an appreciation of living an entire (ital) life, not just the beginning. When we're really old we will likely measure our lives by how well we loved, how well we were loved, and by what we created, whether that be family, work, art, or friendships. Even if we have chosen to have them, we will probably not measure our lives collagen injection by collagen injection. "
