All violence, all that is dreary and repels, is not power, but the absence of power.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Quotes
Self-delusion
Delude not yourself with the notion that you may be untrue and uncertain in trifles and in important things the contrary. Trifles make up existence, and give the observer the measure by which to try us; and the fearful power of habit, after a time suffers not the best will to ripen into action.
~ C. M. von Weber
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A sudden crash
All human things hang on a slender thread: The strongest fall with a sudden crash.
~ Ovid
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Small asks
The world expects that its requests will be accepted. That assignments, lunch dates, new projects, and even favors will get a yes. […] It’s just a small ask, the person thinks. Responding or reacting to incoming asks becomes the narration of your days, instead of the generous work of making your own contribution.
~ Seth Godin
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Playfulness
To be playful is not to be trivial or frivolous, or to act as if nothing of consequence will happen. On the contrary, when we are playful with one another, we relate as free persons, and the relationship is open to surprise; everything that happens is of consequence, for seriousness is a dread of the unpredictable outcomes of open possibility. To be serious is to press for a specified conclusion. To be playful is to allow for unlimited possibility.
~ James Carse
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Interior stability
To listen is very hard, because it asks of us so much interior stability that we no longer need to prove ourselves by speeches, arguments, statements or declarations. True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presence known. They are free to receive, welcome, to accept.
~ Henri Nouwen
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Painting a masterpiece
You can’t really decide to paint a masterpiece. You just have to think hard, work hard, and try to make a painting that you care about. Then, if you’re lucky, your work will find an audience for whom it’s meaningful.
~ Susan Kare
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Connectedness
The essential challenge is to transform the isolation and self-interest within our communities into connectedness and caring for the whole The key is to identify how this transformation occurs. We begin by shifting our attention from the problems of community to the possibilities of community.
~ Peter Block
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Unprofitable
If you have not known how to make the best use of it, if it was unprofitable to you, what need you care to lose it, to what end would you desire longer to keep it?
~ Michel de Montaigne
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Decisions and outcomes
Decisions are good even if the outcomes aren’t. The same is true for the process of generous creativity. The process is a smart one even if the particular work doesn’t resonate, even if the art doesn’t sell, even if you aren’t happy with the reaction from the critics. That’s because what we seek and how we create aren’t the same thing.
~ Seth Godin
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A tragic history
But I wish some one would attempt a tragical history of literature, showing how the greatest writers and artists have been treated during their lives by the various nations which have produced them and whose proudest possessions they are. It would show us the endless fight which the good and genuine works of all periods and countries have had to carry on against the perverse and bad.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
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Belonging
The second meaning of the word belong has to do with being an owner: Something belongs to me. To belong to a community is to act as a creator and co-owner of that community. What I consider mine I will build and nurture. The work, then, is to seek in our communities a wider and deeper sense of emotional ownership and communal ownership. It means fostering among all of a community’s citizens a sense of ownership and accountability, both in their relationship and in what they actually control.
~ Peter Block
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Folly
What a ridiculous thing it is to trouble ourselves about taking the only step that is to deliver us from all trouble! As our birth brought us the birth of all things, so in our death is the death of all things included. And therefore to lament that we shall not be alive a hundred years hence, is the same folly as to be sorry we were not alive a hundred years ago.
~ Michel de Montaigne
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Time and strength [are] limited
One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind. In order to read what is good one must make it a condition never to read what is bad; for life is short, and both time and strength limited.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
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Connection
To act on whatever our intentions might be to make the world better requires something more than individual action It requires, in almost every case, people who may have little connection with each other, or who may even be on opposite sides of a question, to decide to come together for some common good.
~ Peter Block
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Obstacles
When you start to see your world as something more in line as a tool and an obstacle to interact with, play with, you’re going to take that lesson and look at other obstacles in your life. Your relationships, your job, your work, your health even. All these things are going to be so strongly ultimately affected by this tiny little change of yourself and your city.
~ Caitlin Pontrella
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The number of days
Wherever your life ends, it is all there. The utility of living consists not in the length of days, but in the use of time; a man may have lived long, and yet lived but a little. Make use of time while it is present with you. It depends upon your will, and not upon the number of days, to have a sufficient length of life.
~ Michel de Montaigne
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The reward
For the important work, the instructions are always insufficient. For the work we’d like to do, the reward comes from the fact that there is no guarantee, that the path isn’t well lit, that we cannot possibly be sure it’s going to work.
~ Seth Godin
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Civilization
The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.
~ Sigmund Freud
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Footprints in the sand
When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. […] From all this it may be concluded that thoughts put down on paper are noth- ing more than footprints in the sand: one sees the road the man has taken, but in order to know what he saw on the way, one requires his eyes.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
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