You can’t just live in a comfortable little suburban neighborhood and get your education from movies and television and have any perspective on life.
~ J. Craig Venter
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Perspective on life →
Walk only in really pleasant company →
Smoke like a chimney, work like a horse, eat without thinking, go for a walk only in really pleasant company.
~ Albert Einstein
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Genius →
Talent is like the marksman who hits a target which others cannot reach; Genius is like the marksman who hits a target… which others cannot even see.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
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Those defiant words →
I am unafraid as I prepare myself for that day when the artifices and disguises will be stripped away and I shall make judgment of myself. Is it just brave talk, or do I mean what I say? Were they for real, those defiant words I spoke against fortune, or were they just theatre – Just acting a part?
~ Seneca
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This greater good you’ve found →
Indeed, if you find anything in human life better than justice, truth, self-control, courage – in shrot, anything better than the sufficiency of your own mind, which keeps you acting according to the demands of true reason and accepting what fate gives you outside of your own power of choice – I tell you, if you can see anything better than this, turn to it heart and soul and take full advantage of this greater good you’ve found.
~ Marcus Aurelius
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Only when you breath your last →
Lectures and learned seminars and sayings culled from the teachings of philosophers and educated conversation do not reveal the mind’s real strength. For speech is bold even where the speaker is timorous. What you have achieved will be revealed only when you breathe your last.
~ Seneca
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Forgive as well as forget →
…if you can forgive as well as forget, if you can keep from growing sour, surly, bitter and cynical… You’ve got it half-licked.
~ Henry Miller
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One who acts naturally →
One who tries to stand on tiptoe cannot stand still. One who stretches his legs too far cannot walk. One who advertises himself too much is ignored. One who is too insistent on his own view finds few to agree with him. One who claims too much credit does not get even what he deserves. One who is too proud is soon humiliated. These are condemned as extremes of greediness and self-destructive activity. Therefore, one who acts naturally avoids such extremems.
~ Book of Tao
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Except by a steady, long continued process →
Some day, in the years to come, you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here, now … NOW it is being decided whether in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a steady, long continued process.
~ Phillips Brooks
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