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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Quotes
A long long time ago I began collecting inspirational quotes and aphorisms which became my collection of quotes.
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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Problems
Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; Indeed they create our courage and wisdom. It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually. When we desire to encourage the growth of the human spirit, we challenge and encourage the human capacity to solve problems, just as in school we deliberately set problems for our children to solve. It is through the pain of confronting and resolving problems that we learn.
~ Scott Peck
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The main thing
I think we often get distracted by, well, life, or social media, or whatever. At the end of the day, we can see that we haven’t really moved the needle on what we truly care about. Women out there in particular know this is true. How do you keep the main thing the main thing?
~ Sarah Elizabeth Lewis
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Understanding of self
But the nature of man is sufficiently revealed for him to know something of himself and sufficiently veiled to leave much impenetrable darkness, a darkness in which he ever gropes, forever in vain, trying to understand himself.
~ Alexis de Tocqueville
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Truly humble
Humility engenders learning because it beats back the arrogance that puts blinders on. It leaves you open for truths to reveal themselves. You don’t stand in your own way. […] Do you know how you can tell when someone is truly humble? I believe there’s one simple test: Because they consistently observe and listen, the humble improve. They don’t assume, ‘I know the way.’
~ Wynton Marsalis
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Net and scaffold
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.
~ Annie Dillard
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In love with the game
Somewhere behind the athlete you’ve become, and the hours of practice, and the coaches who have pushed you, is a little girl who fell in love with the game and never looked back… play for her.
~ Annie Mist Þórisdóttir
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Coming back
Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.
~ Terry Pratchett
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Refuge
We all have so much power that we don’t use. And I think it’s because of cynicism, which is a toxic spiritual state. Cynicism is a refuge for cowards.
~ Cory Booker
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Change
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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Not just reflecting
… there are two ways to go through life, as a thermometer or a thermostat. Don’t be a thermometer, just reflecting what’s aound you, going up or down with your surroundings. Be a thermostat and set the temperature.
~ Cory Booker
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Win by deception
Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception.
~ Niccolò Machiavelli
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Excellence
Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.
~ Sun Tzu
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