A good upbringing means not that you won’t spill sauce on the tablecloth, but that you won’t notice it when someone else does.
~ Anton Chekhov
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Quotes
A long long time ago I began collecting inspirational quotes and aphorisms which became my collection of quotes.
The choice
It’s a choice. The choice between being the linchpin (the one people can’t live without) and the cog (who does what she’s told). The choice between doing art (and forging your own path, on your own terms, and owning what happens) and merely doing your job (which pushes all the power and all the responsibility to someone else).
The good news is that it’s your choice, no one else’s.
~ Seth Godin
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Lazy summer afternoons
If I want to recall peace, serenity, pleasure, I think of myself on those lazy summer afternoons, with my chair tipped back against the wall, the book on my lap, and the pages softly turning. There may have been, at certain times in my life, higher pitches of ecstasy, vast moments of relief and triumph, but for quiet, peaceful happiness, there has never been anything to compare with it.
~ Isaac Asimov
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Apparently worthless
Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.
~ Thomas Merton
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Seek the truth
Seek the truth: It always shows us what we should do, what we should not do, and what we should stop doing.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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Just time
[I]t has been said that time is money. That proverb understates the case. Time is a great deal more than money. If you have time you can obtain money—usually. But though you have the wealth of a cloak-room attendant at the Carlton Hotel, you cannot buy yourself a minute more time than I have, or the cat by the fire has.
~ Arnold Bennett
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Bias toward the future
The insights from large group methods have a bias toward the future and devote little or no time to negotiating the past or emphasizing those areas where we will never agree anyway. The most organizing conversation starter is “What do we want to create together?”
~ Peter Block
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A quest
To be on a quest is nothing more or less than to become an asker of questions.
~ Sam Keen
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Unconscious
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate.
~ Carl Jung
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Know thyself
“Know thyself” is a piece of advice which is as old as civilization, and probably a great deal older. To follow that advice, a man must do more than indulge in introspection. If I would know myself, I must know my environment; for as a body, I am part of the environment, a natural object among other natural objects, and, as a mind, I consist to a great extent of my immediate reactions to the environment and of my secondary reactions to those primary reactions.
~ Aldous Huxley
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Too short
Very often people are proud of the purity of their conscience only because their memory is too short.
~ Zanizad Rafaezsky
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Purpose of myths
The purpose of myths is not to have us feel separate from the gods in stories but to have us understand that we are capable of the great feats that they perform.
~ Seth Godin
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Real life
Real life is found only in the present. If people tell you that you should live your life preparing for the future, do not believe them. We live in this life, and we know this life only, and therefore all our efforts should be directed toward the improvement of this life. Not your life in general but every hour of this life should be lived in the best way you know how.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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Departed
When I remember all
~ Tom Moore
the friends so link’d together,
I’ve seen around me fall,
like leaves in wintry weather;
I feel like one who treads alone
some banquet hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled, whose garlands dead,
and all but he departed.
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To see beauty
Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
~ Franz Kafka
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A cup of tea
These details may seem trivial to the foolish, but to the thoughtful they will not seem trivial. The proper, wise balancing of one’s whole life may depend upon the feasibility of a cup of tea at an unusual hour.
~ Arnold Bennett
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And then
You have to be myopic and completely focused and unbalanced in every way. Once you’ve achieved success, you’re free to do whatever you like.
~ Kevin O’Leary
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Ignorance
There are two types of ignorance, the pure, natural ignorance into which all people are born, and the ignorance of the so-called wise. You will see that many among those who call themselves scholars do not know real life, and they despise simple people and simple things.
~ Blaise Pascal
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The questions
The minute we begin to think we have all the answers, we forget the questions.
~ Madeleine L’Engle
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Change, please
I put a dollar in one of those change machines. Nothing changed.
~ George Carlin
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