Every person has within himself the capability to understand the life of all humanity. This capability is hidden deep in the soul, but it exists, and sooner or later, a person will find it.
~ Edward Carpenter
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Quotes
A long long time ago I began collecting inspirational quotes and aphorisms which became my collection of quotes.
Trust yourself and promise
What we seek out is someone who sees us and consistently keeps their promises to bring us the magic we were hoping for. Someone who has committed to rhyming with what they did yesterday. When you trust yourself enough to turn pro, You’re entering into a covenant with those you seek to serve. You promise to design with intention, and they agree to engage with the work you promised to bring them.
~ Seth Godin
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Virtue and vice
When the intellect becomes the slave of vices and passions, the supporter of lies, it becomes not only a perversion, but an illness, and we cannot see the difference between truth and falsehood, good and evil, virtue and vice.
~ William Ellery Channing
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Expanding our understanding
The lesson? To respond to the unexpected and hurtful behavior of others with something more than a wipe of the glasses, to see it as a chance to expand our understanding, even if, as Proust warns us, “when we discover the true lives of other people, the real world beneath the world of appearances, we get as many surprises as on visiting a house of plain exterior which inside is full of hidden treasure, torture-chambers or skeletons.”
~ Alain de Botton
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The causes of evil
Look for the causes of the evil from which you suffer in yourself. Sometimes this evil is the direct consequence of your activity; Sometimes it happens after a lengthy period of transformation of an evil which you committed long ago. But the source is always in you, and salvation from it lies in changes in your actions, your way of life.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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A burden
I have a burden on my soul. During all my long life, I did not make anyone happy, neither my friends, nor my family, nor even myself. I have done many evil things. […] I was the cause of the beginning of three big wars. About 800,000 people were killed because of me on the battlefields, and their mothers, brothers, and widows cried for them. And now this stands between me and god.
~ Otto von Bismarck
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Knowledge
The title “scholar” suggests that a person has gone to school, and that he studied, but it does not mean that he has acquired any truly important knowledge.
~ George Lichtenberg
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Reward for virtue
The reward for virtue is the understanding of the good deed.
~ Cicero
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Ignorance
A precondition of becoming knowledgeable may be a resignation to, and accommodation with, the extent of one’s ignorance, an accommodation which requires a sense that this ignorance need not be permanent, or indeed need not be taken personally, as a reflection of one’s inherent capacities.
~ Alain De Botton
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Highest possible goals
In the long run, people achieve only that which they have set as goals for themselves; Therefore, set the highest possible goals for yourself.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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Self-respect
To live without self-respect is to lie awake some night, beyond the reach of warm milk, phenobarbital, and the sleeping hand on the coverlet, counting up the sins of commission and omission, the trusts betrayed, the promises subtly broken, the gifts irrevocably wasted through sloth or cowardice or carelessness. However long we postpone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously uncomfortable bed, the one we make ourselves. Whether or not we sleep in it depends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves.
~ Joan Didion
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Self-perfection
Every man, from the king to the poorest pauper, should seek his own perfection, because only self-perfection improves mankind.
~ Confucius
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Speak more
If you want to stop a person from action, ask him to speak more on the topic. The more people speak, the less desire they have to act.
~ Thomas Carlyle
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Unwholesome incarnations
There is no man, however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or even lived in a way which was so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly, if he could, expunge it from his memory. But he shouldn’t regret this entirely, because he cannot be certain that he has indeed become a wise man—so far as any of us can be wise—unless he has passed through all the fatuous or unwholesome incarnations by which that ultimate stage must be reached.
~ Marcel Proust
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Opportunities to lose focus
The first element to consider when creating a more realistic “ideal day” is that unlike Franklin, we have many more places to be and many more opportunities to lose focus. We have to account for this, not fight against it.
~ Maneesh Sethi
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Character
Character—the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life—is the source from which self-respect springs.
~ Joan Didion
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Wise consumption
Wise consumption is much more complicated than wise production. What five people will produce, one person can very easily consume, and the question for each individual and for every nation is not how are we to produce, but how our products are to be consumed.
~ John Ruskin
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Goodness
Pay bad people with your goodness; Fight their hatred with your kindness. Even if you do not achieve victory over other people, you will conquer yourself.
~ Henri Amiel
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Misfortunes
If you fear woes and misfortunes, then you are already unhappy. Those who fear misfortunes usually deserve them.
~ Chinese proverb
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Virtue stands firm
This is the divine law of life: That only virtue stands firm. All the rest is nothing.
~ Pythagoras
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