Never be mean to somebody who can hurt you by doing nothing. The reality is, that’s probably true of everybody you interact with; you’re interacting with them because you want them to do something.
~ Chris Voss
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Quotes
A long long time ago I began collecting inspirational quotes and aphorisms which became my collection of quotes.
Attachment
Worrying is impossible without attachment. No one worries about the weather on Saturn, because no one is counting on the weather to be a certain way. The time we spend worrying is actually time we’re spending trying to control something that is out of our control. Time invested in something that is within our control is called work. That’s where our most productive focus lies.
~ Seth Godin
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Worry
If the problem can be solved, why worry? And if the problem can’t be solved, then worrying will do you no good.
~ Shantideva
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Feelings scare us
You don’t know if your idea is any good the moment it’s created. Neither does anyone else. The most you can hope for is a strong gut feeling that it is. And trusting your feelings is not as easy as the optimists say it is. There’s a reason why feelings scare us—because what they tell us and what the rest of the world tells us are often two different things.
~ Hugh MacLeod
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Yes and no
Half of the troubles of this life can be traced to saying yes too quickly and not saying no soon enough.
~ Josh Billings
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Always writing
I cannot find any patience for those people who believe that you start writing when you sit down at your desk and pick up you pen and finish writing when you put down your pen again; a writer is always writing, seeing everything through a thin mist of words, fitting swift little descriptions to everything he sees, always noticing.
~ Shirley Jackson
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Today
I don’t complain about the lack of time… what little I have will go far enough. Today—this day—will achieve what no tomorrow will fail to speak about. I will lay seige to the gods and shake up the world.
~ Seneca, Medea, 423-5
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Better questions
Sounds like we’re losing our grit. We’ve been brought up to think we’re so smart and clever and that we don’t have to work hard for anything that we just give up when we come against a tough problem. The main difference between innovators and the rest of us is that innovators ask more and better questions.
~ Shane Parrish
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Digital minimalism
To be a digital minimalist, in other words, means you accept the idea that new communication technologies have the potential to massively improve your life, but also recognize that realizing this potential is hard work.
~ Cal Newport
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Keeping you small
The trick is: You bite off more than you can chew… and then you still chew it. Your mind always believes it can do less than it actually can. It will tell you it’s too much, to stop, to take a break, to cancel this or that. But your mind will lie to you to keep you small.
~ Will Smith
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The wisdom of the body
You can’t dance and be sad. You can listen to music and cry, you can read and cry, you can draw and cry but you can’t dance and cry. The body won’t let you.
~ Esther Perel
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Statuary
Sculpture is more divine, and more like nature,
~ Longfellow
that fashions all her works in high relief,
and that is sculpture. This vast ball, the Earth,
was moulded out of clay, and baked in fire;
Men, women, and all animals that breath
are statues, and not paintings.
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Amusements
Let us read, and let us dance; These two amusements will never do harm to the world.
~ Voltaire
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Illusion
The self, the place where we live, is a place of illusion. Goodness is connected with the attempt to see the unself… to pierce the veil of selfish consciousness and join the world as it really is.
~ Erwin Schrödinger
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Sculpting
The sculptor must paint with his chisel: Half his touches are not to realize, but to put power into, the form. They are touches of light and shadow, and raise a ridge, or sink a hollow, not to represent an actual ridge or hollow, but to get a line of ight, or a spot of darkness.
~ John Ruskin
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Rewriting
Rewriting [is] very painful. You know it’s finished when you can’t do anything more to it, though it’s never exactly the way you want it… The hardest thing in the world is simplicity. And the most fearful thing, too. You have to strip yourself of all your disguises, some of which you didn’t know you had. You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That is the goal.
~ James Baldwin
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True beauty
Moral beauty is the basis of all true beauty. This foundation is somewhat covered and veiled in Nature. Art brings it out, and gives it more transparent forms.
~ Victor Cousin
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The effort is real
If you are going to be a writer there is nothing I can say to stop you; If you’re not going to be a writer nothing I can say will help you. What you really need at the beginning is somebody to let you know that the effort is real.
~ James Baldwin
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Well adjusted
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
~ Jiddu Krishnamurti
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Example of the mind
The idea of the painter and the sculptor is undoubtedly that perfect and excellent example of the mind, by imitation of which imagined form all things are represented which fall under human sight.
~ John Dryden
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