A long long time ago I began collecting inspirational quotes and aphorisms which became my collection of quotes.
After a long conversation, stop and try to remember what you have just discussed. Don’t be surprised if many things, sometimes even everything you have discussed, were meaningless, empty, and trivial, and sometimes even bad.
~ Leo Tolstoy
slip:4a1128.
Never, in peace or war, commit your virtue or your happiness to the future. Happy work is best done by the man who takes his long-term plans somewhat lightly and works from moment to moment… the present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received.
~ C.S. Lewis
slip:4a1162.
When a person sets to work, even if it is the most unqualified, primitive, simple work, the human soul calms down. As soon as a person starts to work, all the demons leave him and cannot approach him. A man becomes a man.
~ Thomas Carlyle
slip:4a1161.
Pass on what you have learned. Strength, mastery… but weakness… folly… failure also. Yes, failure most of all. The greatest teacher failure is. Luke, we are what they grow beyond. That is the true burden of all masters.
~ Yoda, in Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi, (2017 film)
slip:4a1125.
You tell me flatly that you are too tired to do anything outside your programme at night. In reply to which I tell you flatly that if your ordinary day’s work is thus exhausting, then the balance of your life is wrong and must be adjusted. A man’s powers ought not to be monopolized by his ordinary day’s work.
~ Arnold Bennett
slip:4a1160.
To him that waits all things reveal themselves, provided that he has the courage not to deny, in the darkness, what he has seen in the light.
~ Coventry Patmore
slip:4a1123.
What people think of as the moment of discovery is really the discovery of the question.
~ Jonas Salk
slip:4a1159.
What I do now is think up a problem and a resolution to that problem. I then begin the story, making it up as I go along, having all the excitement of finding out what will happen to the characters and how they will get out of their scrapes, but working steadily toward the known resolution so that I don’t get lost en route.
When asked for advice by beginners, I always stress that. Know your ending, I say, or the river of your story may finally sink into the desert sands and never reach the sea.
~ Isaac Asimov
slip:4a1193.
Constant idleness should be included in the tortures of hell, but it is, on the contrary, considered to be one of the joys of paradise.
~ Charles de Montesquieu
slip:4a1158.
Generous silence provides space for the other person to be with their own self, for you to be with them for presence to show up. It allows them to take a breath. It whispers, “this is an interesting place to be. Let’s hang out here for a moment.” […] Generous silence can allow the delicate insights of a conversation to blossom and bloom.
~ Michael Bungay Stanier
slip:4a1157.