“You don’t need a better computer to become a writer. You don’t need a better guitar to become a musician. You don’t need a better camera to become a photographer. What you need is to get to work.”
James Clear, Blog
“I’ve been really lucky to see many, many places. Now, the great adventure is the inner world, now that I’ve spent a lot of time gathering emotions, impressions, and experiences. Now, I just want to sit still for years on end, really, charting that inner landscape because I think anybody who travels knows that you’re not really doing so in order to move around—you’re traveling in order to be moved. And really what you’re seeing is not just the Grand Canyon or the Great Wall but some moods or intimations or places inside yourself that you never ordinarily see when you’re sleepwalking through your daily life.”
Pico Iyer, via Becoming Wise (Page 196)
“We now know that doing good to others, having a network of strong and supportive relationships, and having a sense that one’s life is worthwhile are the three greatest determinants of happiness.”
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, via Becoming Wise (Page 192)
“How you handle even minor adversity might seem like nothing, but, in fact, it reveals everything.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 193)
Men go forth to wonder at the heights of mountains,
the huge waves of the sea,
the broad flow of the rivers,
the vast compass of the ocean,
the courses of the stars,
and they pass by themselves without wondering.
Saint Augustine, via Becoming Wise (Page 163)
“All art holds the knowledge that we’re both living and dying at the same time. It can hold it. And thank God it can, because nothing out in the corporate world is going to shine that back to us, but art holds it.”
Marie Howe, via Becoming Wise (Page 148)
“We find fulfillment where we choose to find our fulfillment. And if you’re told you can only find it here and you don’t look at where it is, which is your life, you keep thinking it’s coming. Oh, it’ll be here one day. I’ll get the big love. Well, you have the big love. It’s already here.”
Eve Ensler, via Becoming Wise (Page 145)
“My heart cannot be educated by myself. It can only come out of a relationship with others. And if we accept being educated by others, to let them explain to us what happens to them, and to let yourself be immersed in their world so that they can get into our world, then you begin to share something very deep.”
Xavier Le Pichon, via Becoming Wise (Page 143)
“The way to set moral change in motion, [Anthony Appiah] says, is not to go for the jugular, or even for dialogue—straight to the things that divide you. Talk about sports. Talk about the weather. Talk about your children. Make a human connection. Change comes about in part, as he describes it, by way of ‘conversation in the old-fashioned sense’—simple association, habits of coexistence, seeking familiarity around mundane human qualities of who we are.”
Krista Tippett, Becoming Wise (Page 135)
“I come to understand that for most of my life, when I was looking for love, I was looking to be loved. In this, I am a prism of my world. I am a novice at love in all its fullness, a beginner.”
Krista Tippett, Becoming Wise (Page 108)
“Love is the superstar virtue of virtues, and the most watered down word in the English language.”
Krista Tippett, Becoming Wise (Page 104)
“Love is something we only master in moments.”
Krista Tippett, Becoming Wise (Page 68)
“You can’t dominate people without separating them from each other and from themselves. The more people get plugged back into their bodies, into each other, the more impossible it will be for us to be dominated and occupied. I think that’s really the work right now, and I don’t mean that in a narcissistic way. I mean, how in our daily lives are we connecting in every single respect with ourselves and everything around us? Because that’s where transcendence comes from. That’s where real energetic transformation comes from.”
Eve Ensler, via Becoming Wise (Page 97)
“There are very strong words of Martin Luther King. His question was always, how is it that one group—the white group—can despise another group, which is the black group. And will it always be like this? Will we always be having an elite condemning or pushing down others that they consider not worthy? And he says something I find extremely beautiful and strong, that we will continue to despise people until we have recognized, loved, and accepted what is despicable in ourselves. There are some elements despicable in ourselves, which we don’t want to look at, but which are part of our natures. We are mortal.”
Jean Vanier, via Becoming Wise (Page 83)
“Music is what language would love to be if it could.”
John O’Donohue, via Becoming Wise (Page 77)
“Beauty is that in the presence of which we feel more alive.”
John O’Donohue, via Becoming Wise (Page 75)
“Today, make sure you take a walk. And in the future, when you get stressed or overwhelmed, take a walk. When you have a tough problem to solve or a decision to make, take a walk. When you want to be creative, take a walk. When you need to get some air, take a walk. When you have a phone call to make, take a walk. When you need some exercise, take a long walk. When you have a meeting or a friend over, take a walk together. Nourish yourself and your mind and solve your problems along the way.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 189)
“In yoga, the transitions between postures are a measure of grace as much as the postures themselves. I find myself applying this physical experience in minute ways in the more cerebral course of my working days.”
Matthew Stanford, via Becoming Wise (Page 72)
“There’s a reason why, when my son who’s six is crying, he needs a hug. It’s not just that he needs my love. He needs a boundary around his experience. He needs to know that the pain is contained and can be housed and it won’t be limiting his whole being. He gets a hug and he drops into his body.”
Matthew Stanford, via Becoming Wise (Page 68)
“The core of life is about losses and deaths both subtle and catastrophic, over and over again, and also about loving and rising again. The cancer, the car accident—these are extreme experiences of other trajectories we’re on—aging, the loss of love, the death of dreams, the child leaving home. Grief and gladness, sickness and health, are not separate passages. They’re entwined and grow from and through each other, planting us, if we’ll let them, more profoundly in our bodies in all their flaws and their grace.”
Krista Tippett, Becoming Wise (Page 68)