I just do my work, and I work every day, and my ambition is just to do something better than I last did.
Patti SmithRead
For everything bad, there's a million really exciting things, whether it's someone puts out a really great book, there's a new movie, there's a new detective, the sky is unbelievably golden, or you have the best cup of coffee you ever had in your life.
Interpretation
Even amidst negativity, there are countless positive and exciting experiences to cherish.
Patti Smith's quote emphasizes that despite the presence of negative events or experiences in life, there exists an abundance of joyful and thrilling moments waiting to be appreciated. It encourages us to focus on the good things, such as art, nature, and simple pleasures, which can uplift our spirits and provide a counterbalance to the challenges we face.
In practice
Posting on social media to inspire friends during challenging times.
I just do my work, and I work every day, and my ambition is just to do something better than I last did.
My small torrent of words dissipated into an elaborate sense of expanding and receding. It was my entrance into the radiance of imagination. This process was especially magnified within the fevers of influenza, measles, chickenpox, and mumps. I got them all and with each I was privileged with a new level of awareness. Lying deep within myself, the symmetry of a snowflake spinning above me, intensifying through my lids, I seized a most worthy souvenir, a shard of heaven’s kaleidoscope.
Eyeing the traffic circulating the lobby hung with bad art. Big invasive stuff unloaded on Stanley Bard in exchange for rent. The hotel is an energetic, desperate haven for scores of gifted hustling children from every rung of the ladder. Guitar bums and stoned-out beauties in Victorian dresses. Junkie poets, playwrights, broke-down filmmakers, and French actors. Everybody passing through here is somebody, if not in the outside world.
I've always felt outside of things; I've always felt different.
No matter what anybody thinks about any of them, every record I've done has been done with the same amount of care, anguish, pain, suffering, and joy.
My son and daughter lost their father quite young, so we keep him present with us. It's just a daily practice.
Who pleasure gives, Shall joy receive
Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.
Happiness: an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.
Happiness is the ultimate goal...The mistake we make is not going for happiness first. If we did, everything else would follow.
Happiness is not mere pleasure, not the outcome of wealth. It is the result of active work rather than passive enjoyment of pleasure.
I've about decided that's the main thing that separates happy people from the other people: the feeling that you're a practical item, with a use, like a sweater or a socket wrench.
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