There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat.
~ Lowell
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Inspirational Quotes book (selected)
See also Inspirational Quotes.
Life
Pick an arbitrary, stupid goal, become totally involved in it, and pursue it with vigor, and what happens to you in that pursuit is your life.
~ Kenny Shopsin
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Work
No matter how isolated you are and how lonely you feel, if you do your work truly and conscientiously, unknown friends will come and seek you.
~ Carl Jung
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Questions
The only question that really matters, the only question whose correct answer can exert a civilizing influence on the future specialist, is the question asked by Buddha and Jesus, by Lao-Tsu and Socrates, by Job and Aeschylus, and Chaucer and Shakespeare and Dostoevsky, by every philosopher, every mystic, every great artist: Who am I and what, if anything, can I do about it?
~ Aldous Huxley
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Hardship
You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.
~ Alain de Botton
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Perfectionism
Perfectionism is not as much the desire for excellence, as it is the fear of failure couched in procrastination.
~ Dan Miller
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Feelings
Let everything happen to you: Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
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Learn something
No day in which you learn something is a complete loss.
~ David Eddings
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Play
Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.
~ Fred Rogers
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Decline
Just as I have my own role to play, so does time. And time does its job much more faithfully, much more accurately, than I ever do. Ever since time began (when was that, I wonder?), it’s been moving ever forward without a moment’s rest. And one of the privileges given to those who’ve avoided dying young is the blessed right to grow old. The honor of physical decline is waiting, and you have to get used to that reality.
~ Haruki Murakami
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Courage
Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.
~ Harper Lee
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It can’t be done
Morale is when your hands and feet keep on working when your head says it can’t be done.
~ Ben Morcell
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Experience
Experience is not what happens to you; It is what you do with what happens to you.
~ Aldous Huxley
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Try
Don’t say you can’t until you prove you can’t.
~ Les Paul
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Ideally like stars
Ideals are like stars; You will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But, like seafaring men on the desert of waters, you choose them as our guides, and following them reach your destiny.
~ Carl Schurz
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Play more
Play more. I feel like people are so serious, and it doesn’t take much for people to drop back into the wisdom of a childlike playfulness. If I had to prescribe two things to improve health and happiness in the world, it’d be movement and play. Because you can’t really play without moving, so they’re intertwined.
~ Jason Nemer
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