“It was true, of course, there was an abnormal level of narcissism in our society, but it did not do, he told himself, to spend too much time going on about it. Society changed. Narcissism was about love, ultimately, even if only love of self. And that was better than hate…. Did it matter if young men thought of fashion and hair gel when, not all that many years ago, their thoughts tended to turn to war and flags and the grim partisanship of the football terrace?”

— Alexander McCall Smith , book Espresso Tales

Espresso Tales, chapter 3.
The 44 Scotland Street series

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Alexander McCall Smith 55

British writer 1948

Sam Keen (1931) author, professor, and philosopher

Source: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 163

“In all these years, you never believed I loved you. And I did. I did so much. I did love you. I even loved your hate and your hardness.”

Tennessee Williams Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Source: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

“We have always thought about design as being so much more than just the way something looks. It's the whole thing: the way something works on so many different levels. Ultimately, of course, design defines so much of our experience.”

Jonathan Ive (1967) English designer and VP of Design at Apple

Ive explaining his view on Apple's use of design in the product video shown at WWDC 2013 for iOS 7.

“Narcissism: when one grows too old to believe in one's uniqueness, one falls in love with one's complexity.”

John Fowles book Daniel Martin

Source: Daniel Martin (1977), Ch. 2, Games

“There is perhaps no truer sign that a man is really advancing than that he is learning to forget himself, that he is losing the natural thoughts about self in the thought of One higher than himself, to whose guidance he can commit himself and all men.”

John Campbell Shairp (1819–1885) British writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 565.

“Try to remember the moment when all the stupid innocent things you thought about life and love, all the things you thought mattered, all the things you though were true… try to remember when they all turned out to be lies. —Kyle”

Chad Kultgen (1976) American writer

Source: The Lie

“I wonder if the course of narcissism through the ages would have been any different had Narcissus first peered into a cesspool. He probably did.”

Frank O'Hara (1926–1966) American poet, art critic and writer

Source: Early Writing

“…The music was evolving with society, and society, if you recall, there was a narcissism that entered society in the 80s. Saturday Night Fever, you know, hey! This whole LOOK, the LOOK about things, and the look almost became more important of the content…”

John McLaughlin (1942) guitarist, founder of the Mahavishnu Orchestra

On music and society in the 1980s, as quoted in "John McLaughlin: Challenges to creative music", by The Snapshots Foundation, YouTube, Nov 8, 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iubDTkT3Y4

“Less hate and greed
Is what we need
And more of service true;
More men to love
The flag above
And keep it first in view.Less boast and brag
About the flag,
More faith in what it means;
More heads erect,
More self-respect,
Less talk of war machines.”

Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer

Source: A Heap o' Livin' (1916), Our Duty to Our Flag, stanzas 1-2, p. 59.

“It is thought pretty to say that "Women have no passion." If passion is excitement in the daily social intercourse with men, women think about marriage much more than men do; it is the only event of their lives. It ought to be a sacred event, but surely not the only event of a woman's life, as it is now. Many women spend their lives in asking men to marry them, in a refined way. Yet it is true that women are seldom in love. How can they be?”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Cassandra (1860)

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Alexander McCall Smith 55

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