“When the suffering of another creature causes you to feel pain, do not submit to the initial desire to flee from the suffering one, but on the contrary, come closer, as close as you can to him who suffers, and try to help him.”
Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 214)
“Sure: Life is tough. But it gets a lot easier when you are laughing at it. So. Despite the suffering. In fact: To spite the suffering; to spite the hardships; to spite the challenges—laugh at them all. They can’t stand it when you do. And they all get easier. Yes: Laugh at them all. Laughter wins.”
Jocko Willink, Discipline Equals Freedom (Page 89)
“By picking their own punishments, children become more internally driven to avoid them. By choosing their own rewards, children become more intrinsically motivated to achieve them. Let your kids take a greater role in raising themselves.”
Bruce Feiler, The Secrets of Happy Families
“A recent wave of research shows that children who eat dinner with their families are less likely to drink, smoke, do drugs, get pregnant, commit suicide, and develop eating disorders. Additional research found that children who enjoy family meals have larger vocabularies, better manners, healthier diets, and higher self-esteem.”
Bruce Feiler, The Secrets of Happy Families
“It isn’t that you wake up one day and decide that’s it: I am going to be weak. No. It is a slow incremental process. It chips away at our will—it chips away at our discipline. We sleep in a little later. We miss a workout, then another. We start to eat what we shouldn’t eat and drink what we shouldn’t drink. And, without realizing it—one day, you wake up and you have become something that you never would have allowed. Instead of strong—you are weak. Instead of disciplined—you are disorganized and lost. Instead of moving forward and progressing—you are moving backward and decaying.”
Jocko Willink, Discipline Equals Freedom (Page 72)
“It wasn’t in a war. It wasn’t in a battle. It isn’t in a melee of fire and destruction that most of us succumb to weakness. We are taken apart, slowly. Convinced to take an easier path. Enticed by comfort. Most of us aren’t defeated in one decisive battle. We are defeated one tiny, seemingly insignificant surrender at a time that chips away at who we should really be.”
Jocko Willink, Discipline Equals Freedom (Page 72)
“The clearest and simplest notions are almost always concealed by sophisticated meditations.”
Marcus Tullius Cicero, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 213)
“Very often the simplest and least educated people can easily and unconsciously understand the meaning of life while the most scholarly people lack this ability, because they have been too educated to understand the simple things that are basic to all people.”
Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 213)
“Our biggest desire is to live forever. But when we are freed from this body, we will not wish to come back. Is there such a child who, once born, would like to return to the womb of his mother? Is there a man who, freed from prison, would like to return to it? In the same way, a person would not be afraid about the future liberation from his body, if he is not connected too closely with this material life.”
Tables Of The Babids, via A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 212)
“How does ‘good’ apply to the worst of losses: the death of a loved one? It is easy to think that there is nothing ‘good’ in death. But then I remember the people I have lost throughout my life: the memories of them, the experiences, the fun, their unique personalities, and everything they gave me. Not only in their life, but in their death. What their life taught me, and what their death taught me. The mark they have left on me. And I realized, there is good; even in death.”
Jocko Willink, Discipline Equals Freedom (Page 62)
“People always seem to want to know how to read faster. But with few exceptions, all the techniques and tricks of speed reading are a scam. And listening to audiobooks on 2-3X speed? I guess you could learn how to scarf your food down faster, but doesn’t that sort of miss the point of what is supposed to be a pleasurable experience? In all my years as a reader and writer, I’ve only found one way to read faster (and better). And it’s to read a lot.“
Ryan Holiday
