Character—the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life—is the source from which self-respect springs.
~ Joan Didion
slip:4a970.
Character →
Wise consumption →
Wise consumption is much more complicated than wise production. What five people will produce, one person can very easily consume, and the question for each individual and for every nation is not how are we to produce, but how our products are to be consumed.
~ John Ruskin
slip:4a969.
Goodness →
Pay bad people with your goodness; Fight their hatred with your kindness. Even if you do not achieve victory over other people, you will conquer yourself.
~ Henri Amiel
slip:4a968.
Misfortunes →
If you fear woes and misfortunes, then you are already unhappy. Those who fear misfortunes usually deserve them.
~ Chinese proverb
slip:4a967.
Virtue stands firm →
This is the divine law of life: That only virtue stands firm. All the rest is nothing.
~ Pythagoras
slip:4a966.
Innocence →
Once, in a dry season, I wrote in large letters across two pages of a notebook that innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself. Although now, some years later, I marvel that a mind on the outs with itself should have nonetheless made painstaking record of its every tremor, I recall with embarrassing clarity the flavor of those particular ashes. It was a matter of misplaced self-respect.
~ Joan Didion from, On Self-Respect
slip:4a965.
Mortality →
The essential power that confronting your mortality will give you—I call it the Sublime. Because it also opens up this idea of how amazing the world is that we live in, and how much we take for granted because we think that we’re going to live forever. It’s an incredibly important concept to me and it’s also very personal in the sense that I came this close to dying myself. I compare it to standing at the shore of some vast ocean. The fear of that dark ocean makes you turn away and retreat. I want you to get into your little boat and I want you to go into that ocean and explore it.
~ Robert Greene
slip:4a964.
The pit of despair →
When—despite your best efforts—you feel like you’re losing at the game of life, remember: Even the best of the best sometimes feel this way. When I’m in the pit of despair, I recall what iconic writer Kurt Vonnegut said about his process: “When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.” Don’t overestimate the world and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think. And you are not alone.
~ Tim Ferriss
slip:4a963.
Self-doubt →
You know what the best thing about being an entrepreneur is? That you never have to experience self-doubt, the way people with normal day jobs do.
~ Hugh MacLeod
Ha. I was just kidding. Actually, as an entrepreneur, you have self-doubt coming out of your pores like cold sweat. And that’s on a good day.
slip:4a962.
Desires →
It is easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all that follow it.
~ Benjamin Franklin
slip:4a961.