a collection of quotes

This happens from time to time, I've decided. 

"The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing." - Blaise Pascal

"How aloof and uninterested a parental figure must usually have been for someone to grow up deeply charming." ~ "Reputation is a bit like a table: one or two marks and everyone notices, a whole host of scratches and it all blends in"  - Alain De Botton

"The classical virtues are all decision making heuristics to make one optimize for the long term rather than the short term." - Nakal Ravikant

 "If the meek ever inherit the earth, the strong will take it away from them." - Gustav Hasford

"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd." - Voltaire

"We human beings are primates. We have a deeply ingrained set of cultural and interpersonal behavioral rules which we violate only at social cost. One of these rules, essential for a tribal organism, is bilaterality: loyalty is a two way street (another is hiercharchality: yield to the boss). Such rules are not iron bound or immutable - we're not robots - but our new hive super-organism employers don't obey them instinctively, and apes and monkeys and hominids tend to revert to tit for tat quite easily when unsure of their status. Perceived slights result in retaliation, and blundering, human blind organizations can slight or bruise an employee's ego without even noticing. And slighted or bruised employees who lack instinctive loyalty because the culture they come from has spent generations systematically destroying social hierarchies and undermining their sense of belonging are much more likely to start thinking the unthinkable." -Charles Stross

"To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is it worth of human life unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?" - Cicero

"A man generally has two reasons for doing things: one that sounds good and a real one." - J.P. Morgan

 "Self reflection requires great bravery. Rationalization is your greatest enemy." - Awa Kenzo

 "To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin or your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will be unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable." - C.S. Lewis

"If most of your courtship attempts have succeeded, you must be a very attractive and charming person that has been aiming too low." - Geoffrey Miller

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool." - Richard Feynman

"When have you ever seen someone who had no doubts who was also correct about anything." - Orson Scott Card

"Envy is the religion of the mediocre. It comforts them, it soothes their worries, and finally it rots their souls, allowing them to justify their meanness or their greed until they believe these to be virtues. Such people are convinced that the doors of heaven will be opened only to poor wretches like themselves who go through life without leaving any trace but their threadbare attempts to belittle others and to exclude - and destroy, if possible - those who, by the simple fact of their existence, show up their own poorness of spirit, mind, and guts." - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

"Experiencing stories that tell the tale of protagonists for whom we can empathize gives us the courage to examine our own lives and change them. So if your story doesn't change your lead character irrevocably from beginning to end, no one will really care about it. It may entertain them but it will have little effect on them. It will be forgotten. We want characters in stories that take on the myriad challenges of changing their lives and somehow make it through, with invaluable experience. Stories give us the courage to act when we face confusing circumstances that require decisiveness." - Shawn Coyne