The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.
~ G. K. Chesterton
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Quotes
A long long time ago I began collecting inspirational quotes and aphorisms which became my collection of quotes.
Breakfast
All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast.
~ John Gunther
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Obstacles
Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.
~ Henry Ford
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Far more control
We have far more control in our lives than many embrace. We create or co-create our experiences in life, and each day is a new opportunity to be fully engaged in the present moment. It’s the present moment where glimpses of our potential are revealed and expressed. A living masterpiece is not drawn on a canvas or etched in stone or inked by pen. It’s the pursuit and expresssion of applied insight and wisdom.
~ Michael Gervais
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Daring
To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.
~ Søren Kierkegaard
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Preparation
To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated.
~ James P. Carse
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Designing your life
So the longer-term challenge is simply designing your life so that you have more of this stuff and less of the fluff. Look at every activity as you go through your day and think, “Is this contributing to getting me a better day—today—and if not, is there anybody in the world who has managed to design this activity out of their lives and still succeed beyond my level?
~ Pete Adeney
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Shocking
Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often.
~ Mae West
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Greatness
I wake up each day with the firm conviction that I am nowhere near my full potential. ‘Greatness’ is a verb. I have miles to go before I sleep, and so I will spend my remaining years desperately looking to improve who I am from year to year. Greatness is not a final destination, but a series of small acts done daily in order to constantly rejuvenate and refresh our skills in a daily effort to become a better version of ourselves.
~ Maurice Ashley
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High-quality information
I get paid to read and comment on the news for a living, and I still wake up every morning completely overwhelmed by all that’s going on. I can feel my blood pressure go up as I try to figure out what to focus on first. The way I manage it is to remember that the world will go on if I don’t read everything. Newspapers will publish again the next day. I will always be better off consumg a smaller amount of high-quality information that trying to consume it all.
~ Tommy Vietor
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We learn so little
It’s so hard to forget pain, but it’s even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.
~ Chuck Palahniuk
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Information
In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.
~ Herbert Simon
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Value and happiness
There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it, and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.
~ Lin Yutang
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Principles are few
As to methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.
~ Harrington Emerson
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Pathways in the mind
As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.
~ Wilfred Arlan Peterson
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Understanding
To understand is to know what to do.
~ Wittgenstein
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Quiet desperation
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
~ Henry David Thoreau
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Have it all
When we try to do it all and have it all, we find ourselves making trade-offs at the margins that we would never take on as our intentional strategy. When we don’t purposefully and deliberately choose where to focus our energies and time, other people—our bosses, our colleagues, our clients, and even our families—will choose for us, and before long we’ll have lost sight of everything that is meaningful and important.
~ Greg McKeown
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Vulnerability
I had no choice but to let my guard down and be vulnerable for the first time. Shockingly, rather than drive my employees away, it drew them closer. Young team members actually pulled me aside and confessed that they used to think I was “superhuman,” meaning I was unrelatable [sic]. Now that I was showing my vulnerability, they said, they would follow me anywhere. The lesson: Rather than striving to be superhuman, I would aspire to be less “super” and more “human.”
~ Linda Rottenberg
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Choices
In a few hundred years, when the history of our time will be written from a long-term perspective, it is likely that the most important event historians will see is not technology, not the Internet, not e-commerce. It is an unprecedented change in the human condition. For the first time—literally—substantial and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices. For the first time, they will have to manage themselves. And society is totally unprepared for it.
~ Peter Drucker
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