“I had a thousand dollars in my bank account. It felt strange just to think that, let alone say it. A thousand dollars. Extra. That I did not immediately need. It took weeks for me to come to terms with this fact, but as I did, I began to experience the most powerful advantage of money: the ability to think of things besides money.”
Tara Westover, Educated (Page 207)
“The seed of curiosity had been planted; it needed nothing more than time and boredom to grow. Sometimes, when I was stripping copper from a radiator or throwing the five hundredth chunk of steel into the bin, I’d find myself imagining the classrooms where Tyler was spending his days. My interest grew more acute with every deadening hour in the junkyard, until one day I had a bizarre thought: that I should enroll in the public school.”
Tara Westover, Educated (Page 60)
“A low self-love in the parent desires that his child should repeat his character and fortune. I suffer whenever I see that common sight of a parent or senior imposing his opinion and way of thinking and being on a young soul to which he is totally unfit. Cannot we let people be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make another you. One’s enough.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Sunbeams (Page 21)
“I have met on the street a very poor man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat was out at the elbows, the water passed through his shoes, and the stars through his soul.”
Victor Hugo, Sunbeams (Page 21)
“We do not remember days, we remember moments.”
Cesare Pavese, Sunbeams (Page 21)
“The more things we desire and the more we have to do to earn or attain those achievements, the less we actually enjoy our lives—and the less free we are.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 33)
“The accident would always make me think of the Apache women, and of all the decisions that go into making a life—the choices people make, together and on their own, that combine to produce any single event. Grains of sand, incalculable, pressing into sediment, then rock.”
Tara Westover, Educated (Page 40)
“The past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don’t have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.”
Virginia Woolf, via Educated
“If there is any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not deter or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again.”
William Penn, Sunbeams (Page 20)
Alan Watts Quote on The Present and How It’s Not A Result Of The Past
“Everyone automatically assumes that the present is the result of the past. Turn it around, and consider whether the past may not be a result of the present. The past may be streaming back from the now, like the country as seen from an airplane.”
Alan Watts, Sunbeams (Page 14)
Beyond the Quote (Day 388)
Seeing the past as being the cause of your present steals from you the accountability that’s needed to take ownership of your future. For, you can’t change the outcome of your future if you’re busy blaming what happened in the past. You have to realize, as Watts outlines above, that it’s the present that caused the past, not the past that caused the present.
Read More »Alan Watts Quote on The Present and How It’s Not A Result Of The PastEducated: A Memoir [Book]
Book Overview: Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Tara’s older brothers became violent. When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home.
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Post(s) Inspired by this Book:
- 13 Poignant Tara Westover Quotes from Educated
- Tara Westover Quote on How Education Is About More Than Making A Living (Beyond the Quote Day 394)
- John Dewey Quote on Education and How The Process and The Goal Are One And The Same (Beyond the Quote Day 390)
“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we would find in each man’s life a sorrow and a suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Sunbeams (Page 19)
“All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Sunbeams (Page 19)
“Money only marginally changes life. It doesn’t solve the problems that people without it seem to think it will. In fact, no material possession will. External things can’t fix internal issues.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 31)
R. Buckminster Fuller Quote on Truth and How It’s Completely Spontaneous
“Truth is completely spontaneous. Lies have to be taught.”
R. Buckminster Fuller, Sunbeams (Page 23)
Beyond the Quote (Day 387)
I suspect that most people overthink the act of being—and it’s easy to see why. Think about everything that we’re exposed to on a daily basis. All of the advertisements, the images, the messages, the conversations—and think about how each of them communicate a different way of being. You can be the person who does this; who buys that; who believes this; who supports that; who interacts here; who chooses to go there; who speaks up about this; who follows people like that; who dresses like this; who spends their time doing that… the possibilities for becoming are, quite literally, endless.
Read More »R. Buckminster Fuller Quote on Truth and How It’s Completely Spontaneous