A long long time ago I began collecting inspirational quotes and aphorisms which became my collection of quotes.
Defiance and acceptance come together well in the following principle: There is always a countermove, always an escape or a way through, so there is no reason to get worked up. No one said it would be easy and, of course, the stakes are high, but the path is there for those ready to take it. This is what we’ve got to do. And we know that it’s going to be tough, maybe even scary.
~ Ryan Holiday
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Language is the amber in which a thousand precious and subtle thoughts have been safely embedded and preserved. It has arrested ten thousand lightning flashes of genius, which, unless thus fixed and arrested, might have been as bright, but would have also been as quickly passing and perishing, as the lightning.
~ Richard Chenevix Trench
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The truth is the heroism of your childhood entertainments was not true valor. It was theater.
~ David Foster Wallace
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Writing is essentially donkey work, manual labor of the mind. What makes it bearable are those moments (which sometimes can last for weeks, months) when the book takes over, takes on a life of its own, goes off in unexpected directions.
~ John Gregory Dunne
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A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions.
~ Oliver Wendell Berry
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I’m not saying that you have to be a reader to save your soul in the modern world. I’m saying it helps.
~ Walter Mosley
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These are serious fears. But they’re not the real fear. Not the Master Fear, the Mother of all Fears that’s so close to us that even when we verbalize it we don’t believe it. Fear That We Will Succeed. That we can access the powers we secretly know we possess. That we can become the person we sense in our hearts we truly are.
~ Steven Pressfield
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The premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty; He who has learnt to die has forgot to serve.
~ Montaigne
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Somebody’s boring me—I think it’s me.
~ Dylan Thomas
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The creative mind gets poisoned with the idea that your great work will be the result of getting serious. So many of my good ideas come from what looks like goofing off, wasting time. Art is play. There’s no way to tell what’s deep or shallow until you play with the idea.
~ Austin Kleon
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[…] so the Muse whispered in Beethoven’s ear. Maybe she hummed a few bars into a million other ears. But no one else heard her. Only Beethoven got it.
~ Steven Pressfield
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It’s a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.
~ John Steinbeck
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A bore is a man who, when you ask him how he is, tells you.
~ Bert Taylor
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My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations.
~ Michael J. Fox
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I think freedom, ideally, is being able to choose your responsibilities. Not not having any responsibilities, but being able to choose which things you want to be responsible for.
~ Toni Morrison
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The essence of professionalism is the focus upon the work and its demands, while we are doing it, to the exclusion of all else. The ancient Spartans schooled themselves to regard the enemy, any enemy, as nameless and faceless. In other words, they believed that if they did their work, no force on Earth could stand against them.
~ Steven Pressfield
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I will keep constant watch over myself and—most usefully—will put each day up for review. For this is what makes life evil—that none of us looks back upon our own lives. We reflect upon only that which we are about to do. And yet our plans for the future descend from the past.
~ Seneca
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The fact is one’s own voice is not heard anywhere else. It’s a challenge to be yourself. It makes a lot of courage.
~ Yusef Lateef
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Self employment, for me at least, is a never-ending contest between the world’s worst manager and the world’s laziest employee.
~ Daniel Akst
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The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
~ Eden Phillpotts
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