“It’s ruinous for the soul to be anxious about the future and miserable in advance of misery, engulfed by anxiety that the things it desires might remain its own until the very end. For such a soul will never be at rest—by longing for things to come it will lose the ability to enjoy present things.”
Seneca, via The Daily Stoic (Page 250)
“Outward transformation—in our clothes, in our cars, in our grooming—might feel important but is superficial compared with the inward change.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 249)
“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)
“Siddhartha listened. He was now listening intently, completely absorbed, quite empty, taking in everything… He could no longer distinguish the different voices—the merry voice from the weeping voice, the childish voice from the manly voice. They all belonged to each other… They were all interwoven and interlocked, entwined in a thousand ways. And all the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, all the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them together was the world. All of them together was the stream of events, the music of life… when he did not listen to the sorrow or laughter, when he did not bind his sound to any one particular voice and absorb it in his Self, but heard them all, the whole, the unity, then the great song of a thousand voices consisted of one word: Om—perfection.”
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha, via Sunbeams (Page 128)
“Without trust, words become the hollow sound of a wooden gong. With trust, words become life itself.”
John Harold, via Sunbeams (Page 128)
“The longer you’ve trusted someone, the more likely they are to be trustworthy. The longer an idea excites you, the more likely you are to enjoy doing it. The longer you wait before making a major life decision (marriage, career, etc.), the more likely that decision is to be good.”
Mark Manson, Blog
“As an organizer I start from where the world is, as it is, not as I would like it to be. That we accept the world as it is does not in any sense weaken our desire to change it into what we believe it should be—it is necessary to begin where the world is if we are going to change it to what we think it should be.”
Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals, via The Daily Stoic (Page 237)
“People always wonder if they’re too old to do XYZ. It has been said that every 7 years, each cell in your body has been entirely replaced. Biology is my worst subject, so that could be wrong. But 7 is a magic number. It takes approximately 7 years to get 10,000 hours in to something. In any period of 7 years, I guarantee anyone you know will look back and say “Boy did I change.” It is never too late to 100% reinvent yourself. 21 to 28 still leaves most of your life. 42 to 49 still leaves nearly half of your life. Between 21 and 49 you will have lived 4 lives. That’s mastery in 4 different fields in the prime of your life. That’s important.”
Jordan Allen, Quora
“Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom.”
Theodore Isaac Rubin, via Sunbeams (Page 127)
“I never dreamed of being a Shakespeare or Goethe, and I never expected to hold the great mirror of truth up before the world; I dreamed only of being a little pocked mirror, the sort that a woman can carry in her purse; one that reflects small blemishes, and some great beauties, when held close enough to the heart.”
Peter Altenberg, via Sunbeams (Page 126)
“Lonely people talking to each other can make each other lonelier.”
Lillian Hellman, The Autumn Garden, via Sunbeams (Page 125)
“But as she has grown, her smile has widened with a touch of fear and her glance has taken on depth. Now she is aware of some of the losses you incur by being here—the extraordinary rent you have to pay as long as you stay.”
Annie Dillard, via Sunbeams (Page 126)