“Kindness is invincible but only when it’s sincere, with no hypocrisy or faking. For what can even the most malicious person do if you keep showing kindness and, if given the chance, you gently point out where they went wrong—right as they are trying to harm you?”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, via The Daily Stoic (Page 146)
“Thinking about interior peace destroys interior peace. The patient who constantly feels his pulse is not getting any better.”
Hubert van Zeller, via Sunbeams (Page 100)
“Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.”
Baruch Spinoza, via Sunbeams (Page 100)
“The greatest portion of peace of mind is doing nothing wrong. Those who lack self-control live disoriented and disturbed lives.”
Seneca, Moral Letters, via The Daily Stoic (Page 145)
“Hurt people, hurt people.”
Charles Eads, Quote Investigator
“Hurt people hurt people. But healed people heal people. Respect your feelings, and you’ll find your trauma. Respect your trauma and you’ll find your purpose. Respect your purpose and you’ll find your destiny. Respect your destiny and you’ll find your legacy.”
Rebecca Bardess, Twitter
“The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.”
John Muir, via Sunbeams (Page 99)
“The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.”
Oscar Wilde, via Sunbeams (Page 99)
“Childhood is not only the childhood we really had but also the impressions we formed of it in our adolescence and maturity. That is why childhood seems so long. Probably every period of life is multiplied by our reflections upon it in the next. The shortest is old age because we shall never be able to think back on it.”
Cesare Pavese, via Sunbeams (Page 99)
“God created man, and finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a female companion so that he might feel his solitude more acutely.”
Paul Valéry, via Sunbeams (Page 99)
“Let us therefore set out whole-heartedly, leaving aside our many distractions and exert ourselves in this single purpose, before we realize too late the swift and unstoppable flight of time and are left behind. As each day arises, welcome it as the very best day of all, and make it your own possession. We must size what flees.”
Seneca, Moral Letters, The Daily Stoic (Page 143)
“Life is short and it hurts. Love is the only drug that works.”
John Coit, via Sunbeams (Page 98)
“Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.”
Eugene Ionesco, via Sunbeams (Page 98)
“How much of what you did today was simply due to inertia? Never get so busy that you forget to actively design your life.”
Steph Smith, Twitter | Read Matt’s Blog on this quote ➜
“I try to pull the language into such a sharpness that it jumps off the page. It must look easy, but it takes me forever to get it to look so easy. Of course, there are those critics — New York critics as a rule — who say, Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it’s good but then she’s a natural writer. Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.”
Maya Angelou, The Paris Review Interviews: Volume IV
“We cannot predict the value our work will provide to the world. That’s fine. It is not our job to judge our own work. It is our job to create it, to pour ourselves into it, and to master our craft as best we can.”
James Clear, Blog
“If you tell the truth, you have infinite power supporting you; but if not, you have infinite power against you.”
Charles Gordon, via Sunbeams (Page 97)
“The pain of love is the pain of being alive. It’s a perpetual wound.”
Maureen Duffy, via Sunbeams (Page 97)
“Then what makes a beautiful human being? Isn’t it the presence of human excellence? Young friend, if you wish to be beautiful, then work diligently at human excellence. And what is that? Observe those whom you praise without prejudice. The just or the unjust? The just. The even-tempered or the undisciplined? The even-tempered. The self-controlled or the uncontrolled? The self-controlled. In making yourself that kind of person, you will become beautiful—but to the extent you ignore these qualities, you’ll be ugly, even if you use every trick in the book to appear beautiful.”
Epictetus, Discourses, The Daily Stoic (Page 140)