“The unrestricted person, who has in hand what they will in all events, is free. But anyone who can be restricted, coerced, or pushed into something against what they will is a slave.”
Epictetus, Discourses, via The Daily Stoic (Page 81)
“We can sometimes exploit a disaster to block internal change. Like Elizabeth, we can take on a catastrophe to stop ourselves feeling and thinking—and to avoid responsibility for our own intimate acts of destruction.”
Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life (Page 145)
“Sometimes we might try to assume responsibility for a major disaster in order to avoid responsibility for our own destructive behaviour.”
Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life (Page 143)
“‘Success has ruined many a man,’ Benjamin Franklin once said. This is true enough, but what Franklin didn’t mention is that we often work the ruin upon ourselves.”
Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life (Page 132)
“Problems are not problems at all, but results that are dissatisfying.”
Jerry Gillies, via Sunbeams (Page 55)
“Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark or the man afraid of the Light?”
Maurice Freehill, via Sunbeams (Page 55)
“Happy is the person who can improve others, not only when present, but even when in their thoughts!”
Seneca, Moral Letters, via The Daily Stoic (Page 79)
“We are vehemently faithful to our own view of the world, our story. We want to know what new story we’re stepping into before we exit the old one. We don’t want an exit if we don’t know exactly where it is going to take us, even—or perhaps especially—in an emergency. This is so, I hasten to add, whether we are patients or psychoanalysts.”
Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life (Page 123)
“It is less painful, it turns out, to feel betrayed than to feel forgotten.”
Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life (Page 83)
“At one time or another, we all try to silence painful emotions. But when we succeed in feeling nothing we lose the only means we have of knowing what hurts us, and why.”
Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life (Page 27)
“Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in another time.”
Hebrew proverb, via Sunbeams (Page 54)
“Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they’re yours.”
Richard Bach, via Sunbeams (Page 54) (Read Matt’s Blog on this quote)
“Above all, keep a close watch on this—that you are never so tied to your former acquaintances and friends that you are pulled down to their level. If you don’t you’ll be ruined… You must choose whether to be loved by these friends and remain the same person, or to become a better person at the cost of those friends… if you try to have it both ways you will neither make progress nor keep what you once had.”
Epictetus, Discourses, via The Daily Stoic (Page 79)
“Poverty is not the absence of goods, but rather the overabundance of desire.”
Plato, via Sunbeams (Page 53)
“They are so concerned for their life that their anxiety makes life unbearable, even when they have the things they think they want. Their very concern for enjoyment makes them unhappy… I will hold to the saying that: ‘Perfect joy is to be without joy. Perfect praise is to be without praise.’ If you ask ‘what ought to be done’ and ‘what ought not to be done’ on earth in order to produce happiness, I answer that these questions do not have an answer. There is no way of determining such things…”
Thomas Merton, The Way Of Chuang Tzu, via Sunbeams (Page 53)
“If a person gave away your body to some passerby, you’d be furious. Yet you hand over your mind to anyone who comes along, so they may abuse you, leaving it disturbed and troubled—have you no shame in that?”
Epictetus, via The Daily Stoic (Page 78)
40 Astonishing Quotes on Reading To Remind You Of The Magic Of Books
Excerpt: Have you forgotten of the astonishing magic of books? Oh no! You mustn’t scroll past this list until you read our quotes on reading! Quickly!
Read More »40 Astonishing Quotes on Reading To Remind You Of The Magic Of Books
“There’s a time in every kid’s life when they’re still drawing every day and playing basketball every day. Then there’s a day when they stop drawing and keep playing basketball. They keep playing basketball because their parents do, and their parents don’t draw. At some point they’re like, ‘That can’t be cool because my parents don’t do it.’ You don’t think you’re cool, but if your kid says, ‘Dad, will you play with me?’ and you say, ‘Not now, I’m drawing,’ that kid is going to start drawing because that’s cool to them.”
Mo Willems
