Avatar

🥀✨🧠

@luxe-pauvre / luxe-pauvre.tumblr.com

Holly. Over-organiser, skincare obsessive, black outfit connoisseur. If found please return to the nearest bookshop.
Posts
Avatar
I often wonder what Shakespeare would have made of the ironies of modern stardom, and the complex relationship between the masses and those upon whom they bestow their acclaim. As Billie Jean King said: 'Fame is the most confusing thing in the world, and not just for the famous.’ There is a saying in investment banking, perhaps the least sentimental of professions, that, whatever you achieve, however much money you amass, however popular you become, you eventually leave 'in a coffin'. This is not literal, of course, merely a metaphor for the industry's defining assumption: as soon as you lose the ability to make money, you are kicked out of the door, escorted by security guards, with your personal possessions in a small box. Sport, in many ways, is just as brutal. There is no room for emotion, only the remorseless examination of competition. When a player is too old, he disappears, and we move on to the next hero. […] We love only for as long as the gladiator amuses us.

Matthew Syed, The Greatest

#Matthew Syed#The Greatest
Avatar
George Mallory, the great adventurer and mountaineer, spoke for many thrill-seekers when he answered those who questioned his desire to climb Everest, with all its attendant dangers. 'What do we get from this adventure? What we get is sheer joy,’ he wrote in Climbing Everest. 'And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to live. That is what life means and what life is for.’ Some may scoff at these sentiments, but they go deep. It is curious just how often those who choose to live close to death have an overpowering zest for life. It is almost as if by confront ing mortality, by coming face to face with the void that awaits us all, they find meaning in the here and now. As Jonathan Waterman, the peerless mountaineering writer, put it: ‘By bringing myself over the edge and back, I discovered a passion to live my days fully, a conviction that will sustain me like sweet water on the periodically barren plain of our short lives.’

Matthew Syed, The Greatest

#Matthew Syed#The Greatest
Avatar

I was tagged by @thecynical-idealist and @thecrownedgoddess (ages ago, my apologies...)

1. Last song: Suddenly I See by KT Tunstall.

2. Last book: The Story of the Brain in 10 ½ Cells by Richard Wingate.

3. Last movie: The Devil Wears Prada (watching as I type).

4. Last show: Severance.

5. Last thing I looked up: "paediatric SRS Gys".

6. Sweet/savoury/spicy: Savoury in general, though I am eating dark chocolate covered blueberries right now.

7. Relationship status: Single.

8. Looking forward to: Alice in Wonderland at the Royal Ballet.

9. Current obsession: Froot Pops. Chocolate covered berries in general. Literally how did I survive before.

I tag @c-erudio, @bioplasticity, @neuro-lab, @beauty-is-terrror, @questwithambition.

#tags