A long long time ago I began collecting inspirational quotes and aphorisms which became my collection of quotes.
Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see. The span we live is small—small as the corner of the Earth in which we live it. Small as even the greatest renown, passed from mouth to mouth by short-lived stick figures, ignorant alike of themselves and those long dead.
~ Marcus Aurelius
slip:4a176.
Oh, how blessed young men are who have to struggle for a foundation and beginning in life. I shall never cease to be grateful for three and half years of apprenticeship and the difficulties to be overcome, all along the way.
~ John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
slip:4a418.
But the man who puts all of his time to his own uses, who plans every day as if it were his last, is neither impatient for the morrow nor afraid of it. Is there some new kind of pleasure that an hour might bring? All are familiar, all have been experienced to the full the rest Lady Fortune may dispose of as she will; his life is now impregnable.
~ Seneca
slip:4a414.
What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.
~ Viktor Frankl
slip:4a480.
Would you think a man had traveled a long voyage if he had been caught in a savage gale immediately on leaving port and had been buffeted to and fro by alternate blasts from opposite directions so that he was running circles in the same spot? That man has had not a long voyage but a long floundering.
~ Seneca
slip:4a422.
Begin at once a program of self-mastery. But start modestly, with the little things that bother you. Has your child spilled something? Have you misplaced your wallet? Say to yourself, “Coping calmly with this inconvenience is the price I pay for my inner serenity, for freedom from perturbation; you don’t get something for nothing.”
~ Epictetus
slip:4a357.
[T]he dedications of philosophy are impregnable; age cannot erase their memory or diminish their force. Each succeeding generation will hold them in even higher reverence; what is close at hand is subject to envy, whereas the distant we can admire without prejudice. The philosopher’s life is therefore spacious; he is not hemmed in and constricted like others. He alone is exempt from the limitations of humanity; all ages are at his service as at a god’s. Has time gone by? He holds it fast in recollection. Is time now present? He utilizes it. Is it still to come? He anticipates it. The amalgamation of all time into one makes his life long.
~ Seneca
slip:4a394.
We need to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.
~ Viktor Frankl
slip:4a447.
If you encounter an attractive person, then self-restraint is the resource needed; if pain or weakness, then stamina; if verbal abuse, then patience. As time goes by and you build on the habit of matching the appropriate inner resource to each incident, you will not tend to get carried away by life’s appearances. You will stop feeling overwhelmed so much of the time.
~ Epictetus
slip:4a317.
Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.
~ Baruch Spinoza
slip:4a514.
Nobody cares. Do it yourself.
~ Hugh MacLeod
slip:4a288.
What else does the eye do, when it is opened, than see? But whether we ought to look upon somebody’s wife, and in what manner, what tells us that? The faculty of choice. Whether we ought to believe, or to disbelieve, what is said; or whether, if we do believe, we ought to be moved by it or not; what tells us that? Is it not the faculty of choice?
~ Epictetus
slip:4a397.
Small-minded people habitually reproach others for their own misfortunes. Average people reproach themselves. Those who are dedicated to a life of wisdom understand that the impulse to blame something or someone is foolishness, that there is nothing to be gained in blaming, whether it be others or oneself.
~ Epictetus
slip:4a283.
People who are interested in doing something will do it when it’s convenient. People who are committed will do it no matter what.
~ Bob Proctor
slip:4a399.
One of the signs of the dawning of moral progress is the gradual extinguishing of blame. We see the futility of finger-pointing. The more we examine our attitudes and work on ourselves, the less we are apt to be swept away by stormy emotional reactions in which we seek easy explanations for unbidden events.
~ Epictetus
slip:4a162.
We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.
~ Richard Feynman
slip:4a396.
To win the lotto, you need a miracle. To be successful, you need hard work. More people are playin’ the lotto than working hard.
~ Eric Thomas
slip:4a117.
It is not so much what you are doing as how you are doing it. When we properly understand and live by this principle, while difficulties will arise—for they are part of the divine order too—inner peace will still be possible.
~ Epictetus
slip:4a167.
Do external things distract you? Then make time for yourself to learn something worthwhile; stop letting yourself be pulled in all directions. But make sure you guard against the other kind of confusion. People who labor all their lives but have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse toward are wasting their time—even when hard at work.
~ Marcus Aurelius
slip:4a150.
We are not privy to the stories behind people’s actions, so we should be patient with others and suspend judgement of them, recognizing the limits of our understanding.
~ Epictetus
slip:4a329.