“Let us face a pluralistic world in which there are no universal churches, no single remedy for all diseases, no one way to teach or write or sing, no magic diet, no world poets, and no chosen races, but only the wretched and wonderfully diversified human race.”
Jacques Barzun, via Sunbeams (Page 126)
“One windy day two monks were arguing about a flapping banner. The first said, ‘I say the banner is moving, not the wind.’ The second said, ‘I say the win is moving, not the banner.’ A third monk passed by and said, ‘The wind is not moving. The banner is not moving. Your minds are moving.”
Zen parable, via Sunbeams (Page 125)
“It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, via Sunbeams (Page 125)
“Life shrinks or expands according to one’s courage.”
Anaïs Nin, via Sunbeams (Page 125)
“We tell ourselves that we need the right setup before we finally buckle down and get serious. Or we tell ourselves that some vacation or time alone will be good for a relationship or an ailment. This is self-deceit at its finest. It’s far better that we become pragmatic and adaptable—able to do what we need to do anywhere, anytime. The place to do your work, to live the good life, is here.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 232)
“Marriage is not a matter of creating a quick community of spirit by tearing down and destroying all boundaries, but rather a good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude… Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them no less than one another.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, via Sunbeams (Page 123)
“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
Carl Jung, via Sunbeams (Page 123)
“What am I doing at a level of consciousness where this is real?”
Thaddeus Golas, The Lazy Man’s Guide To Entertainment, via Sunbeams (Page 122)
“The distractions of the digital age hack the vulnerabilities of our psychology. They give us little microbursts of dopamine that feel good in the moment, but amount to very little in the grand scheme of things.”
Mark Manson, Blog
“I argue that the most powerful thing you can do to add healthy years is to curate your immediate social network. In general, you want friends with whom you can have a meaningful conversation. You can call them on a bad day and they will care. Your group of friends are better than any drug or anti-aging supplement, and will do more for you than just about anything.”
Dan Buettner, The Power Of Positive People
“You can usually accomplish more by giving something your full effort for a few years rather than giving it a lukewarm effort for fifty years. Pick a priority for this season of your life and do it to the best of your ability.”
James Clear, Blog
“The bad days are more important than the good days. If you write or exercise or meditate or cook when you don’t feel like it, then you maintain the habit. And if you maintain the habit, then all you need is time.”
James Clear, Blog
“The Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change: What gets rewarded, gets repeated. What gets punished, gets avoided. Don’t reward behavior you don’t want to see repeated.”
James Clear, Blog
“The epitome of the human realm is to be stuck in a huge traffic jam of discursive thought.”
Chögyam Trungpa, The Myth Of Freedom, via Sunbeams (Page 121)
“Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world.”
Arthur Schopenhauer, via Sunbeams (Page 121)
“Trust me, real joy is a serious thing. Do you think someone can, in the charming expression, blithely dismiss death with an easy disposition? Or swing open the door to poverty, keep pleasures in check, or meditate on the endurance of suffering? The one who is comfortable with turning these thoughts over is truly full of joy, but hardly cheerful. It’s exactly such a joy that I would wish for you to possess, for it will never run dry once you’ve laid claim to its source.”
Seneca, Moral Letters, via The Daily Stoic (Page 227)
“It came to me that reform should begin at home, and since that day I have not had time to remake the world.”
Will Durant, via Sunbeams (Page 120)
“Love has no claims. Love has no expectations. Most of us were raised to become prostitutes. We have the illusion that with good behavior, good grades, lots of awards, pretty clothes, nice smiles, we can buy love. How many ifs were you raised with? I love you if you make it through high school. I love you if you bring good grades home. Boy, would I love you if I could say my son is a doctor. You become a doctor or a lawyer, or whatever your parents never were able to become, with the illusion that they will love you more. Love can never be bought. There are people who spend their lives prostituting themselves, pleasing other people in the hope of getting love. They will shop the rest of their lives for it and they will never find it.”
Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, via Sunbeams (Page 120)
“We begin life with the world presenting itself to us as it is. Someone—our parents, teachers, analysts—hypnotizes us to ‘see’ the world and construe it in the ‘right’ way. These others label the world, attach names and give voices to the beings and events in it, so that thereafter, we cannot read the world in any other language or hear it saying other things to us. The task is to break the hypnotic spell, so that we become undeaf, unblind, and multilingual, thereby letting the world speak to us in new voices and write all its possible meaning in the new book of our existence. Be careful in your choice of hypnotists.”
Sidney Jourard, via Sunbeams (Page 120)
“She knew the years of isolation had altered her behavior until she was different from others, but it wasn’t her fault she’d been alone. Most of what she knew, she’d learned from the wild. Nature had nurtured, tutored, and protected her when no one else would. If consequences resulted from her behaving differently, then they too were functions of life’s fundamental core.”
Delia Owens, Where The Crawdads Sing (Page 363)