A long long time ago I began collecting inspirational quotes and aphorisms which became my collection of quotes.
To-do lists tend to be long; Success lists are short. One pulls you in all directions; The other aims you in a specific direction. One is a disorganized directory and the other is an organized directive. If a list isn’t built around success, then that’s not where it takes you. If your to-do list contains everything, then it’s probably taking you everywhere but where you really want to go.
~ Gary Keller
slip:4a1441.
Whilst we converse with what is above us, we do not grow old, but grow young.
~ R. W. Emerson
slip:4a1440.
Be like a postage stamp—stick to one thing until you get there.
~ Josh Billings
slip:4a1439.
I should not talk so much about myself if there was anybody else whom I knew so well.
~ H. D. Thoreau
slip:4a1438.
[O]ne of the most fundamental struggles for any leader—in business, in organizations, or in public life—stems directly from the separation that most of us feel between who we are as people and what we do as practical professionals.
~ William Isaacs
slip:4a1437.
What is this little, agile, precious fire, this fluttering motion which we call the mind?
~ Prior
slip:4a1436.
This planet is genuinely strange. If we were all flown to the moon or to Mars and walked around on them, they wouldn’t seem that strange to us because there would be no yardsticks or anything to measure their strangeness by—they’re just vast museums of geology. Whereas the Earth is a deranged zoo, and somebody left the doors of the cages open. We have real strangeness because we can measure the degree to which things are or are not what they ought to be.
~ J. G. Ballard
slip:4a1435.
Giving yourself the time and sapce to think and feel is crucial to your existence. Personhood requires encapsulation. You have to find a way to be yourself before you can share yourself.
~ Jaron Lanier
slip:4a1434.
The impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.
~ Annie Dillard
slip:4a1433.
The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.
~ Robert Hughes
slip:4a1432.
The mind grows narrow in proportion as the soul grows corrupt.
~ Rousseau
slip:4a1431.
I’ve come to believe that wise people don’t tell us what to do; They start by witnessing our story. They take the anecdotes, rationalizations, and episodes we tell, and see us in a noble struggle. They see the way we’re navigating the dialectics of life—intimacy versus independence, control versus uncertainty—and understand that our current self is just where we are right now, part of a long continuum of growth.
~ David Brooks
slip:4a1430.
Beauty vanishes; Virtue is lasting.
~ Goethe
slip:4a1428.
The truth is that one day you hate yourself, and the next day you can’t wait to use your gifts.
~ Adam J. Kurtz
slip:4a1427.
The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
~ Milton
slip:4a1426.
Part of the act of creating is in discovering your own kind. They are everywhere. But don’t look for them in the wrong places.
~ Henry Miller
slip:4a1425.
Be patient. You’ll know when it’s time for you to wake up and move ahead.
~ Ram Dass
slip:4a1424.
Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labeled ‘This could change your life.’
~ Helen Exley
slip:4a1423.
I find that whatever hindrances occur I write just about the same amount of truth in my journal; For the record is more concentrated, and usually it is so very real and earnest life, after all, that interrupts. All flourishes are omitted.
~ H. D. Thoreau
slip:4a1422.
I have rarely sat down at my desk with something to say, other than I am ready. The sitting comes first, turning up with a certain alertness to possibility. Only then does the idea feel free to settle. It settles small and very tentatively, then, through your active attention, it can grow into something much bigger. Sitting in a readied state can sometimes last a long and anxious time. But you must not despair! I have never found a situation where the idea refuses to come to the prepared mind.
~ Nick Cave
slip:4a1421.