A long long time ago I began collecting inspirational quotes and aphorisms which became my collection of quotes.
Passion makes us feel, but never see clearly.
~ Bulwer-Lytton
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Consider this mindset:
never in a hurry
never worried
never desperate
never stopping shortAs Epictetus once summarized his entire philosophy: Persist and resist. Persist in your efforts. Resist giving in to distraction, discouragement, or disorder.
~ Ryan Holiday
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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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The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them.
~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
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The present moment was once the unimaginable future.
~ Stewart Brand
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[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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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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Peole who do not know how to laugh are always pompous and self-conceited.
~ William Makepeace Thackeray
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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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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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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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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 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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