worldview and perspective on Pettiness

In the mid-2000s, a Trans-Atlantic movement emerged, characterized by a rejection of organized religion and the ascent of what came to be known as the “New Atheism.” This trend gained notable traction...

It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.

The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others’ appraisals to play a determinin...

Attention is an intentional, unapologetic discriminator. It asks what is relevant right now, and gears us up to notice only that.

Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.

Moralistic behavior change done for one's self simply manipulates and leverages radical selfishness without challenging it.

We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.

For all our time and attention, no matter how carefully we curate our stuff or how much we might enjoy ourselves along the way, we’re all merely stocking and staging someone else’s opportunity for bar...

The ego is incredibly busy – in other words, it is always drawing attention to itself. It is incredibly busy trying to fill the emptiness. And it is incredibly busy doing two things in particular – co...

Thoughts, like fleas, jump from man to man. But they don't bite everybody.

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

Bumper stickers—and their counterparts on social media—make Simplicism seem virtuous: “Look at me! I’m a good and brave person for distilling this complex issue down to its essence and righteously tak...

We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorns have roses.

Keep yourself clean and bright, for you are the window through which you must see the world.

If a man knows precisely what he can do to you or what epithet he can hurl against you in order to make you lose your temper, your equilibrium, then he can always keep you under subjection. It is a ma...

I am not absentminded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else.

“I’m not superstitious, but I am a little stitious.”

The absence of anger . . . can, in my opinion, be a most alarming symptom . . . If the Jews cursed more bitterly than the Pagans this was, I think, at least in part because they took right and wrong m...

Be not only attentive in hearing, but retentive after hearing.

But disdain – even mere lack – of intelligence, of thought, of knowledge, proves itself to be capable of as great a pride, and of as great a lovelessness or hatred, as does the greatest scholarship or...

I sometimes think that shame, mere awkward, senseless shame, does as much towards preventing good acts and straightforward happiness as any of our vices can do.

To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.

Differences simply act as a yarn of curiosity unraveling until we get to the other side.

For all our hunger for the next bit of breaking news, we quickly forget it once we’ve extracted the emotional charge it can give us. We are soon hungry for the next outrage, the next unbelievable head...

A person may fight ferociously to win success, to be better than everybody else, and then one day find it all seems empty and meaningless.

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.

So we learn early on that lack is embarrassing. Our pain is uncomfortable not just for ourselves but for those around us. Our need is obscene and offensive to a world that prides itself on its self-re...

The mind is seldom quickened to very vigorous operations but by pain, or the dread of pain. We do not disturb ourselves with the detection of fallacies which do us no harm.

My eyes account for less than one percent of the weight of my head,” she observes with sweet resignation; “I’m bony and dense; I see what I expect.”).

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike.