Tone

‘Steve the Pocket’ ’s sig on XKCD forums:
“cephalopod9 wrote:Only on Xkcd can you start a topic involving Hitler and people spend the better part of half a dozen pages arguing about the quality of Operating Systems.”

Remember… any writer who thinks happy people are boring, isn’t trying hard enough.
- http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeusAngstMachina

From New York mag:

http://nymag.com/news/features/56793/index2.html

“In Defense of Distraction – The benefits of distraction and overstimulation”

…” Gallagher became obsessed with the problem of attention five years ago, when she was diagnosed with advanced and aggressive breast cancer. She was devastated, naturally, but then realized, on her way out of the hospital, that even the cancer could be seen largely as a problem of focus—a terrifying, deadly, internal jackhammer. It made her realize, she says, that attention was “not just a latent ability, it was something you could marshal and use as a tool.” By the time she reached her subway station, Gallagher had come up with a strategy: She would make all the big pressing cancer-related decisions as quickly as possible, then, in order to maximize whatever time she had left, consciously shift her attention to more positive, productive things.”

The ultimate source of peace in the family, the country, and the world is altruism.

- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, The Meaning of Life

‘Not all those who wander are lost’

- JR Tolkein.

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they allow disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children now are tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”

- attrib. (possibly incorrectly)to Socrates c.410 BC

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“Things are rarely just crazy enough to work, but they’re frequently just crazy enough to fail hilariously.”

- XKCD mouseover text http://www.xkcd.com/580/