The present moment was once the unimaginable future.
~ Stewart Brand
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Inspirational Quotes book (reviewed)
First judgements
[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
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Desperation
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
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Self-conceit
Peole who do not know how to laugh are always pompous and self-conceited.
~ William Makepeace Thackeray
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Petty hazards
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
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Begin. Begin!
Endings are elusive, middles are nowhere to be found, but worst of all is to begin, to begin, to begin!
~ Donald Barthelme
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Language
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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Theater
The truth is the heroism of your childhood entertainments was not true valor. It was theater.
~ David Foster Wallace
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Manual labor of the mind
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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New ideas
A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions.
~ Oliver Wendell Berry
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Be a reader
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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Premeditation
The premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty; He who has learnt to die has forgot to serve.
~ Montaigne
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Boring
Somebody’s boring me—I think it’s me.
~ Dylan Thomas
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The creative mind
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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Who was listening
[…] 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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Sleep
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
A bore is a man who, when you ask him how he is, tells you.
~ Bert Taylor
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Acceptance
My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations.
~ Michael J. Fox
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Freedom
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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Professionalism
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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