“One of the most fundamental principles of martial arts is that strength should not go against strength. That is: don’t try to beat your opponent where they are strongest. But that’s exactly what we do when we try to undertake some impossible task we haven’t bothered to think through. Or we let someone put us on the spot. Or we say yes to everything that comes our way.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 247)
“For nothing outside my reasoned choice can hinder or harm it—my reasoned choice alone can do this to itself. If we would lean this way whenever we fail, and would blame only ourselves and remember that nothing but opinion is the cause of a troubled mind and uneasiness, then by God, I swear we would be making progress.”
Epictetus, Discourses, via The Daily Stoic (Page 246)
“You become the sum of your actions, and as you do, what flows from that—your impulses—reflect the actions you’ve taken. Choose wisely.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 244)
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
Ben Franklin, via The Daily Stoic (Page 242)
“You have everything in you that Buddha has, that Christ has. You’ve got it all. But only when you start to acknowledge it is it going to get interesting. Your problem is you’re afraid to acknowledge your own beauty. You’re too busy holding on to your own unworthiness. You’d rather be a schnook sitting before some great man. That fits in more with who you think you are. Well, enough already. I sit before you and I look and I see your beauty, even if you don’t.”
Ram Dass, Grist For the Mill, via Sunbeams (Page 130)
“Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The real miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense everything that comes from love is a miracle.”
A Course In Miracles, via Sunbeams (Page 130)
“Love that ends is the shadow of love; true love is without beginning or end.”
Hazrat Inayat Khan, via Sunbeams (Page 130)
“The degree of freedom from unwanted thoughts and the degree of concentration on a single thought are the measures to gauge spiritual progress.”
Ramana Maharshi, via Sunbeams (Page 130)
“You’re welcome to take all of the words of the great philosophers and use them to your own liking (they’re dead; they don’t mind). Feel free to tweak and edit and improve as you like. Adapt them to the real conditions of the real world. The way to prove that you truly understand what you speak and write, that you truly are original, is to put them into practice. Speak them with your actions more than anything else.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 241)
