Quotes

A long long time ago I began collecting inspirational quotes and aphorisms which became my collection of quotes.

Tranquility

Published June 22 · All posts on Jun 22

[Do not disquiet] yourself by running about from place to place. Thrashing around in that way indicates a mind in poor health. In my view, the first sign of a settled mind is that it can stay in one place and spend time with itself.

~ Seneca

slip:4a1544.

Persistence

Published June 20 · All posts on Jun 20

Consider this mindset:

never in a hurry
never worried
never desperate
never stopping short

As Epictetus once summarized his entire philosophy: Persist and resist. Persist in your efforts. Resist giving in to distraction, discouragement, or disorder.

~ Ryan Holiday

slip:4a1543.

The job

Published June 18 · All posts on Jun 18

A man’s job is to make the world a better place to live in, so far as he is able—always remembering the results will be infinitesimal—and to attend to his own soul.

~ Leroy Percy

slip:4a1539

First judgements

Published June 12 · All posts on Jun 12

[R]eject the first judgements and the objections that spring out of them because those objections are so often rooted in fear. […] This is radically different from how we’ve been taught to act. Be realistic, we’re told. Listen to feedback. Play well with others. Compromise. Well, what if the “other” party is wrong? What if conventional wisdom is too conservative? It’s this all-too-common impulse to complain, defer, and then give up that holds us back.

~ Ryan Holiday

slip:4a1538.

Desperation

Published June 10 · All posts on Jun 10

People are getting a little desperate. They might not show their best elements to you. You must never lower yourself to being a person you don’t like. There is no better time than now to have a moral and civic backbone. To have a moral and civic true north. This is a tremendous opportunity for you, a young person, to be heroic.

~ Henry Rollins

slip:4a1540.

Petty hazards

Published May 31 · All posts on May 31

Anybody can rise to meet a crisis and face a crushing tragedy with courage, but to meet the petty hazards of the day with a laugh—I really think that requires spirit.

~ Jean Webster

slip:4a1536.

Defiance and acceptance

Published April 9 · All posts on Apr 9

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

slip:4a1533.

Language

Published March 26 · All posts on Mar 26

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

slip:4a1532.

Manual labor of the mind

Published March 16 · All posts on Mar 16

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

slip:4a1530.

The real fear

Published March 3 · All posts on Mar 3

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

slip:4a1527.