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
slip:4a902.
Quotes
A long long time ago I began collecting inspirational quotes and aphorisms which became my collection of quotes.
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
slip:4a901.
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
slip:4a900.
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.
slip:4a899.
Amusements
Let us read, and let us dance; These two amusements will never do harm to the world.
~ Voltaire
slip:4a897.
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
slip:4a896.
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
slip:4a894.
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
slip:4a892.
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
slip:4a889.
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
slip:4a887.
Well adjusted
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
~ Jiddu Krishnamurti
slip:4a885.
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
slip:4a884.
Endurance
Something that irritates you. That’s the anguish of it. Do this book, or die. You have to go through that. Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: Discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance.
~ James Baldwin
slip:4a882.
Actions
Only actions give life strength; Only moderation gives it a charm.
~ Richter
slip:4a881.
Moderation
Moderation resembles temperance. We are not so unwilling to eat more, as afraid of doing ourselves harm by it.
~ Rochefoucauld
slip:4a876.
Routine
Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition.
~ W. H. Auden
slip:4a875.
Slow
The superior man wishes to be slow in his words and earnest in his conduct.
~ Confucius
slip:4a871.
On the edge
Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center. Big, undreamed-of things—the people on the edge see them first.
~ Kurt Vonnegut
slip:4a870.
The specific outcome
The specific outcome is not the primary driver of our practice. […] We can begin with this: If we failed, would it be worth the journey? Do you trust yourself enough to commit to engaging with a project regardless of the chances of success? The first step is to separate the process from the outcome. Not because we don’t care about the outcome. But because we do.
~ Seth Godin
slip:4a869.
Unfolding
All our progress is an unfolding, like the vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
slip:4a868.