A long long time ago I began collecting inspirational quotes and aphorisms which became my collection of quotes.
What helps luck is a habit of watching for opportunities, of having a patient, but restless mind, of sacrificing one’s ease or vanity, of uniting a love of detail to foresight, and of passing through hard times bravely and cheerfully.
~ Victor Cherbuliez
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The moral? That there is no greater homage we could pay Proust than to end up passing the same verdict on him as he passed on Ruskin, namely, that for all its qualities, his work must eventually also prove silly, maniacal, constraining, false and ridiculous to those who spend too long on it.
“To make [reading] into a discipline is to give too large a role to what is only an incitement. Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it: It does not constitute it.”
Even the finest books deserve to be thrown aside.
~ Alain de Botton
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What makes the difference between an outstandingly creative person and a less creative one is not any special power, but greater knowledge (in the form of practiced expertise) and the motivation to acquire and use it. This motivation endures for long periods, perhaps shaping and inspiring a whole lifetime.
~ Margaret A. Boden
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We only really know what is new, what suddenly introduces to our sensibility a change of tone which strikes us, that for which habit has not yet substituted its pale facsimiles.
~ Marcel Proust
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I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.
~ Jim Carrey
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Read less, study less, but think more. Learn, both from your teachers and from the books which you read, only those things which you really need and which you really want to know.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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For every time you regret that you did not say something, you will regret a hundred times that you did not keep your silence.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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[True optimism involves] seeing the world as it is, yet still believing—and more importantly behaving—in ways that create better outcomes for all of us.
~ Karen Reivich
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We cannot make social media good, because it is fundamentally bad… all we can do is hope that it withers away, and play our small part in helping abandon it.
~ Ian Bogost
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So far as man stands for anything, and is productive or originative at all, his entire vital function may be said to have to deal with maybes. Not a victory is gained, not a deed of faithfulness or courage is done, except upon a maybe; not a service, not a sally of generosity, not a scientific exploration or experiment or textbook, that may not be a mistake. It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all.
~ William James
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Creating something that can be turned down takes discipline and courage, so there’s reason to feel pride for each rejection.
~ Rhaina Cohen
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The extraordinary doesn’t wipe out the ordinary. People get married in wartime. Babies are born during pandemics. My mom drew water fro my bath while my father did test runs for the end of the world.
~ Mary Laura Philpott
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If we don’t want to live in a nepotistic society, we have to stop practicing nepotism. And by ‘we’, I mean you.
~ Richard V. Reeves
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The cure for burnout is not self-care. The cure for burnout is all of us caring for each other.
~ Amelia Nagoski
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Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.
~ Pablo Picasso
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You must want to be a butterfly so badly, you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.
~ Sekou Andrews
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The bravery founded on hope of recompense, fear of punishment, experience of success, on rage, or on ignorance of danger, is but common bravery, and does not deserve the name. True bravery proposes a just end; measures the dangers, and meets the result with calmness and unyielding decision.
~ Francois de la Noue
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I’m not trying to sound like Mr. Smiley Positive Guy. That guy ignores the hard truth. That guy thinks a positive attitude will solve problems. It won’t. But neither will dwelling on the problem. No. Accept reality, but focus on the solution. Take that issue, take that setback, take that problem, and turn it into something good. Go forward. And, if you’re part of a team, that attitude will spread throughout.
~ Jocko Willink
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Failure is not necessarily durable. Remember that the things that they fire you for when you are young are the same things that they give lifetime achievement awards for when you’re old.
~ Francis Ford Coppola
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Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.
~ Lao Tzu
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