See also Inspirational Quotes.
What matters is whether a certain approach gets you to where you want to go. And let’s be clear, using obstacles against themselves is very different from doing nothing. Passive resistance is, in fact, incredibly active. But those actions come in the form of discipline, self-control, fearlessness, determination, and grand strategy.
~ Ryan Holiday
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Pragmatism is not so much realism as flexibility. There are a lot of ways to get from point A to point B. It doesn’t have to be a straight line. It’s just got to get you where you need to go. But so many of us spend so much time looking for the perfect solution that we pass up what’s right in front of us.
~ Ryan Holiday
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Unlike cynicism, hopefulness is hard-earned, makes demands upon us, and can feel like the most indefensible and lonely place on earth. Hopefulness is not a neutral position—it is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism.
~ Nick Cave
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In this modern age, very little remains that is real. Night has been banished, so have the cold, the wind and the stars. They have all been neutralized: The rhythm of life itself is obscured. Everything goes so fast and makes so much noise, and men hurry by without heeding the grass by the roadside, its colour, its smell and the way it shimmers when the wind caresses it. What a strange encounter then is that between man and the high places of his planet!
~ Gaston Rébuffat
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Ritual is not the re-enactment of a past event. It is the re-enactment of meaning.
~ David Whyte
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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
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What is defeat? Nothing but education; nothing but the first step to something better.
~ Wendell Phillips
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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
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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
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The fact is one’s own voice is not heard anywhere else. It’s a challenge to be yourself. It makes a lot of courage.
~ Yusef Lateef
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Modern luxury is the ability to think clearly, sleep deeply, move slowly, and live quietly in a world designed to prevent all four.
~ Justin Welsh
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Make your own recovery the first priority in your life.
~ Robin Norwood
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Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.
~ Henry David Thoreau
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The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.
~ Carl Jung
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Silence is the absolute poise or balance of body, mind, and spirit. The man who preserves his selfhood ever calm and unshaken by the storms of existence—not a leaf, as it were, astir on the tree; Not a ripple upon the surface of shining pool—his, in the mind of the unlettered sage, is the ideal attitude and conduct of life.
~ Charles Eastman
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What I understand today is that when the Stoics said that there was an opportunity in every obstacle, what they meant was the opportunity to practice virtue. To be a good person despite the bad things that have happened. To do good in the world despite the bad that has befallen you. They were speaking of the idea of arete. Excellence—in all forms.
~ Ryan Holiday
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The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man’s foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher.
~ Thomas Henry Huxley
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We are kept from our goal, not by obstacles but by a clear path to a lesser goal.
~ Robert Brault
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Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.
~ Maya Angelou
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Every man has some peculiar train of thought which he falls back upon when he is alone. This, to a great degree, molds the man.
~ Dugald Stewart
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