A long long time ago I began collecting inspirational quotes and aphorisms which became my collection of quotes.
The great charm of conversation consists less in the display of one’s own wit and intelligence, than in the power to draw forth the resources of others. […] The true man of genius will delicately make all who come in contact with him feel the exquisite satisfaction of knowing that they have appeared to advantage.
~ La Bruyère
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Another reprehensible pair is the man who is never at ease and the man who is always at ease. Bustle is not briskness but the agitation of a turbulent mind. And disdaining all activity as a nuisance is not ease but enervation and inertia. … The two attitudes should temper one another: the easy going man should act, the active man take it easy. Consult nature: she will tell you that she created both day and night.
~ Seneca
slip:4a575.
I learned that the best projects grow organically at their own pace, and how terribly important all partnerships are. I have always had a ton of ideas, more than I could ever follow upon or make happen. So much of my dreaming and visioning was all in my own heart and mind. It was not that easy to share it. I have finally learned that I must communicate, (try that when you can’t talk.)
~ Jeff Lowe
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No one is crushed by adverse Fortune who has not first been beguiled by her smile. Only those who become enamored of her gifts as if they were their own forever, and expect deference because of them are prostrated by grief when the deceitful and ephemeral baubles abandon empty and childish minds ignorant of every abiding satisfaction.
~ Seneca
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Students today should begrudge every moment of time. This dewlike life fades away; Time speeds swiftly. In this short life of ours, avoid involvement in superfluous things and just study the Way.
~ Zenji Dōgen
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Why are their pleasures uneasy? Because the motives upon which they are founded are not stable and they totter with the frivolity which gave them birth. … Laboriously they attain what they desire, anxiously they hold what they have attained, and in the meanwhile irrecoverable time is not taken into consideration.
~ Seneca
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Training prepares your body and, most important, your mind for ascent through consistent, hard, disciplined practice.
~ Mark Twight
Go simply, train smart, climb well.
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Books? How, or to what end? For is not reading a kind of preparation for living, but living itself made up of things other than books? It is as if an athlete, when he enters the stadium, should break down and weep because he is not exercising outside. This is what you were exercising for; this is what the jumping-weights, and the sand, and your young partners were all for. So are you now seeking for these, when it is the time for action?
~ Epictetus
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Remember that it is not oly a desire for riches and power that makes you abject and subservient to others, but also a desire for quiet and leisure, and travel and learning. For the value you place on an external object, whatever it may be, makes you subservient to another.
~ Epictetus
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The ideal agent’s frame of reference is thus her whole life, represented as accurately as a human being can remember its history and imagine its future, and lived as intelligently as a human being can exploit its possibilities.
~ Lawrence Becker
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