Quotes: Stewardship. Stoicism. Stories. Strategy. Stress. Stubborn. Students.

Stewardship
Stewardship is holding something natural in trust for future generations.
Stewardship 81 Stewardship: Whatever it is somebody does when they hold a part of the natural world in trust for generations yet unborn. Browning, Notes from Turtle Creek.

Stoicism
The stoic believed indifference was the only attitude to have in a world in which individuals are doomed to defeat.
Stoicism 98 …the Stoic argued that philosophic indifference was the only reasonable attitude to a life in which the struggle for existence is so unfairly doomed to inevitable defeat. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Francis Bacon.

I accepted with resignation everything that happened, expecting the worst, and bearing it mildly and patiently.
Stoicism 201 …while abandoning myself to Fortune, of expecting the worst in all things and resolving to bear that worst mildly and patiently…. Montaigne, Selected Essays.

The stoics urge us to correct our vices but don’t want us to be dejected by them.
Stoicism 295 …the Stoics who, indeed, order us to correct the imperfections and vices which we recognize in us, but forbid us to be sorry and dejected about them. Montaigne, Selected Essays.

Stories
We are always telling stories to ourselves about who we are.
Stories 44 Robert Stone: We need stories…can’t identify ourselves without them…always telling ourselves stories about who we are…. Plimpton, ed. The Writer’s Chapbook

People want stories told quickly and vividly, logically resolved and satisfying.
Story telling 160 M.D. Orr: People…want a story quickly told, well told, vividly told, logically resolved and satisfying…. Hull, ed. The Writer’s Book.

Storytellers have a taste for horrors.
Storytelling 47 Like all story-tellers, Gislebertus had a taste for horrors, and went out of his way to depict them. Clark, Civilization.

Strategy
She was ashamed of something, so she changed the subject.
Strategy 194 She was evidently ashamed of something, and, as people always do in such cases, she began immediately talking of other things, as though they were of absorbing interest to her at the moment. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.

Stress
By concentrating on their jobs, they could cope with stress.
Stress 135 They concentrated on the details of their jobs, hunkering down into the routine, and realized that they could cope with the stress and survive. Childers, Wings of Morning

Stubborn
Trees that bend survive; stubborn trees are torn up root and all.
Stubborn 188 Haemon: See the trees in floodtime, how they bend/ Along the torrent’s course, and how their twigs/ And branches do not snap, but stubborn trees/ Are torn up root and all. Sophocles, Antigone.

Students
Portrait of the student who studies too long and too hard.
Students 43 Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy: “Hard students are commonly troubled with gouts, catarrhs, rheums, cachoxia, bradypepsia, bad eyes, stone, and colic, crudities, oppilations, vertigo, winds, consumptions, and all such diseases as come by over-much sitting: they are most part lean, dry, ill-colored…and all through immoderate pains and extraordinary studies. George Eliot, Middlemarch.

The more you study, the more you will be able to study.
Study habits 295 Johnson: If you spend this day in study, you will find yourself still more able to study tomorrow. Boswell, Life of Johnson, Vol. 1.