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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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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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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There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
~ Shakespeare‘s Hamlet
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The amateur believes he must first overcome his fear; Then he can do his work. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome. He knows there is no such thing as a fearless warrior or a dread-free artist.
~ Steven Pressfield
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If we possess inward solitude we do not fear being alone, for we know that we are not alone. Neither do we fear being with others, for they do not control us. In the midst of noise and confusion we are settled into a deep inner silence. Whether alone or among people, we always carry with us a portable sanctuary of the heart.
~ Richard Foster
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