Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.
~ Pablo Picasso
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Quotes
A long long time ago I began collecting inspirational quotes and aphorisms which became my collection of quotes.
Universality
Creativity is harnessing universality and making it flow through your eyes.
~ Peter Koestenbaum
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Redemption
Because it’s elitist, an initiation into arcana. Because it’s nostalgic, rowing being a skill not much in demand in the industrial world. Because it’s fragile: The boat club is run on a shoestring, and the beat-up old boats held together by spit. Because it’s dangerous, and exercises the wits against the wind and the water. Because it’s a ritual. Because it’s redemption.
~ Barry Strauss
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The warrior and the artist
[…] fear doesn’t go away. The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day.
~ Steven Pressfield
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Conduct of life
Silence is the absolute poise or balance of body, mind, and spirit. The man who preserves his selfhood ever calm and unshaken by the storms of existence—not a leaf, as it were, astir on the tree; Not a ripple upon the surface of shining pool—his, in the mind of the unlettered sage, is the ideal attitude and conduct of life.
~ Charles Eastman
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Infinite
Man’s unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; It is because there is an infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite.
~ Thomas Carlyle
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Silence
The silence that is in the starry sky.
~ William Wordsworth
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Excellence
What I understand today is that when the Stoics said that there was an opportunity in every obstacle, what they meant was the opportunity to practice virtue. To be a good person despite the bad things that have happened. To do good in the world despite the bad that has befallen you. They were speaking of the idea of arete. Excellence—in all forms.
~ Ryan Holiday
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A repelling force
Resistance cannot be seen, touched, heard, or smelled. But it can be felt. We experience it as an energy field radiating from a work-in-potential. It’s a repelling force. It’s negative. Its aim is to shove us away, distract us, prevent us from doing our work.
~ Steven Pressfield
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Solitude
Solitude is more a state of mind and heart than it is a place. There is a solitude of the heart that can be maintained at all times. Crowds, or the lack of them, have little to do with this inward attentiveness.
~ Richard Foster
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Job versus vocation
There is a huge difference between a job and vocation. A job is what we hold to earn money to meet economic demands. A vocation (from Latin vocatus, calling) is what we are called to do with our life’s energy. It is a requisite part of our individuation to feel that we are productive, and not responding to one’s calling can damage the soul.
~ James Hollis
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Lectures
The muses were dumb while Apollo lectured.
~ Charles Lamb
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The quiet ones
Of the ones who have nothing to say, the quiet ones are the most pleasant.
~ Michel ‘Coluche’ Colucci
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Sit down
There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is resistance.
~ Steven Pressfield
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Somewhat higher
The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man’s foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher.
~ Thomas Henry Huxley
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Obstacles
We are kept from our goal, not by obstacles but by a clear path to a lesser goal.
~ Robert Brault
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Leadership
Freedom, by definition, is people realizing that they are their own leaders.
~ Diane Nash
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The best you can
Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.
~ Maya Angelou
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Living the dream
Most of us are “living the dream”—living, that is, the dream we once had for ourselves. We might be married to the person we once dreamed of marrying, have the children and job we once dreamed of having, and own the car we once dreamed of buying. But thanks to hedonic adaptation, as soon as we find ourselves living the life of our dreams, we start taking that life for granted. Instead of spending our days enjoying our good fortune, we spend them forming and pursuing new, grander dreams for ourselves.
~ William B. Irvine
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Overcoming Resistance
How many pages have I produced? I don’t care. Are they any good? I don’t even think about it. All that matters is I’ve put in my time and hit it with all I’ve got. All that counts is that, for this day, for this session, I have overcome Resistance.
~ Steven Pressfield
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