Passions

He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason.

~ Cicero

Elsewhere, this is 4a1556. — slipbox


Rowing

I am rowing toward the past. I am trying to squeeze out of each stroke a better image of myself, and I am trying to enlist the ghosts of history to help power the oars. I want them as friends, as comrades, as partners, as ancestors.

~ Barry Strauss

Elsewhere, this is 4a1555. — slipbox


In an instant

No one has ever reached a point where the power fortune granted was greater than the risk. The sea is calm now, but do not trust it: The storm comes in an instant. Pleasure boats that were out all morning are sunk before the day is over.

~ Seneca

Elsewhere, this is 4a1554. — slipbox


Pragmatism

Pragmatism is not so much realism as flexibility. There are a lot of ways to get from point A to point B. It doesn’t have to be a straight line. It’s just got to get you where you need to go. But so many of us spend so much time looking for the perfect solution that we pass up what’s right in front of us.

~ Ryan Holiday

Elsewhere, this is 4a1553. — slipbox


Hopefulness

Unlike cynicism, hopefulness is hard-earned, makes demands upon us, and can feel like the most indefensible and lonely place on earth. Hopefulness is not a neutral position—it is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism.

~ Nick Cave

Elsewhere, this is 4a1552. — slipbox


Appetite

No man’s body is as strong as his appetites.

~ Tillotson

Elsewhere, this is 4a1551. — slipbox


Reality

In this modern age, very little remains that is real. Night has been banished, so have the cold, the wind and the stars. They have all been neutralized: The rhythm of life itself is obscured. Everything goes so fast and makes so much noise, and men hurry by without heeding the grass by the roadside, its colour, its smell and the way it shimmers when the wind caresses it. What a strange encounter then is that between man and the high places of his planet!

~ Gaston Rébuffat

Elsewhere, this is 4a1550. — slipbox


Persevere

Persevere in what you have begun; hurry as much as you can, so that you will have more time to enjoy a mind that is settled and made flawless. To be sure, you will have enjoyment even as you make it so; But there is quite another pleasure to be gained from the contemplation of an intellect that is spotlessly pure and right.

~ Seneca

Elsewhere, this is 4a1549. — slipbox


Benefit

The one way to guarantee we don’t benefit from failure—to ensure it is a bad things—is to not learn from it. To continue to try the same things over and over (which is the definition of insanity for a reason). People fail in small ways all the time. But they don’t learn. They don’t listen. They don’t see the problems that failure exposes. It doesn’t make them better.

~ Ryan Holiday

Elsewhere, this is 4a1548. — slipbox


The ideal life

The race convinced me of what I had for some time suspected. For me, the ideal life is one that combines body and spirit, one that joins the intensely physical and the intensely intellectual. I would wither away without the exercise of the flesh.

~ Barry Strauss

Elsewhere, this is 4a1547. — slipbox