A long long time ago I began collecting inspirational quotes and aphorisms which became my collection of quotes.
To create a meaningful work of art or to make a discovery or invention requires great discipline, self-control, and emotional stability. It requires mastering the forms of your field. […] When you look at the exceptionally creative work of Masters, you must not ignore the years of practice, the endless routines, the hours of doubt, and the tenacious overcoming of obstacles these people endured.
~ Robert Greene
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What helps luck is a habit of watching for opportunities, of having a patient, but restless mind, of sacrificing one’s ease or vanity, of uniting a love of detail to foresight, and of passing through hard times bravely and cheerfully.
~ Victor Cherbuliez
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The moral? That there is no greater homage we could pay Proust than to end up passing the same verdict on him as he passed on Ruskin, namely, that for all its qualities, his work must eventually also prove silly, maniacal, constraining, false and ridiculous to those who spend too long on it.
“To make [reading] into a discipline is to give too large a role to what is only an incitement. Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it: It does not constitute it.”
Even the finest books deserve to be thrown aside.
~ Alain de Botton
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What makes the difference between an outstandingly creative person and a less creative one is not any special power, but greater knowledge (in the form of practiced expertise) and the motivation to acquire and use it. This motivation endures for long periods, perhaps shaping and inspiring a whole lifetime.
~ Margaret A. Boden
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We only really know what is new, what suddenly introduces to our sensibility a change of tone which strikes us, that for which habit has not yet substituted its pale facsimiles.
~ Marcel Proust
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I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.
~ Jim Carrey
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Read less, study less, but think more. Learn, both from your teachers and from the books which you read, only those things which you really need and which you really want to know.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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For every time you regret that you did not say something, you will regret a hundred times that you did not keep your silence.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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[True optimism involves] seeing the world as it is, yet still believing—and more importantly behaving—in ways that create better outcomes for all of us.
~ Karen Reivich
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We cannot make social media good, because it is fundamentally bad… all we can do is hope that it withers away, and play our small part in helping abandon it.
~ Ian Bogost
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