I have a burden on my soul. During all my long life, I did not make anyone happy, neither my friends, nor my family, nor even myself. I have done many evil things. […] I was the cause of the beginning of three big wars. About 800,000 people were killed because of me on the battlefields, and their mothers, brothers, and widows cried for them. And now this stands between me and god.
~ Otto von Bismarck
slip:4a980.
The title “scholar” suggests that a person has gone to school, and that he studied, but it does not mean that he has acquired any truly important knowledge.
~ George Lichtenberg
slip:4a979.
The reward for virtue is the understanding of the good deed.
~ Cicero
slip:4a978.
A precondition of becoming knowledgeable may be a resignation to, and accommodation with, the extent of one’s ignorance, an accommodation which requires a sense that this ignorance need not be permanent, or indeed need not be taken personally, as a reflection of one’s inherent capacities.
~ Alain De Botton
slip:4a977.
In the long run, people achieve only that which they have set as goals for themselves; Therefore, set the highest possible goals for yourself.
~ Leo Tolstoy
slip:4a976.
To live without self-respect is to lie awake some night, beyond the reach of warm milk, phenobarbital, and the sleeping hand on the coverlet, counting up the sins of commission and omission, the trusts betrayed, the promises subtly broken, the gifts irrevocably wasted through sloth or cowardice or carelessness. However long we postpone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously uncomfortable bed, the one we make ourselves. Whether or not we sleep in it depends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves.
~ Joan Didion
slip:4a975.
Every man, from the king to the poorest pauper, should seek his own perfection, because only self-perfection improves mankind.
~ Confucius
slip:4a974.
If you want to stop a person from action, ask him to speak more on the topic. The more people speak, the less desire they have to act.
~ Thomas Carlyle
slip:4a973.
There is no man, however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or even lived in a way which was so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly, if he could, expunge it from his memory. But he shouldn’t regret this entirely, because he cannot be certain that he has indeed become a wise man—so far as any of us can be wise—unless he has passed through all the fatuous or unwholesome incarnations by which that ultimate stage must be reached.
~ Marcel Proust
slip:4a972.
The first element to consider when creating a more realistic “ideal day” is that unlike Franklin, we have many more places to be and many more opportunities to lose focus. We have to account for this, not fight against it.
~ Maneesh Sethi
slip:4a971.
Character—the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life—is the source from which self-respect springs.
~ Joan Didion
slip:4a970.
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.
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.
If you fear woes and misfortunes, then you are already unhappy. Those who fear misfortunes usually deserve them.
~ Chinese proverb
slip:4a967.
This is the divine law of life: That only virtue stands firm. All the rest is nothing.
~ Pythagoras
slip:4a966.
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, https://www.vogue.com/article/joan-didion-self-respect-essay-1961
slip:4a965.
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.
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.
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.
It is easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all that follow it.
~ Benjamin Franklin
slip:4a961.