“When we experience success, we must make sure that it doesn’t change us—that we continue to maintain our character despite the temptation not to. Reason must lead the way no matter what good fortune comes along.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 106)
“How much harder is it to do the right thing when you’re surrounded by people with low standards? How much harder is it to be positive and empathetic inside the negativity bubble of television chatter? How much harder is it to focus on your own issues when you’re distracted with other people’s drama and conflict? We’ll inevitably be exposed to these influences at some point, no matter how much we try to avoid them. But when we are, there is nothing that says we have to allow those influences to penetrate our minds. We have the ability to put our guard up and decide what we actually allow in.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 104)
“A dog that’s allowed to chase cars will chase cars. A child who is never given any boundaries will become spoiled. An investor without discipline is not an investor—he’s a gambler. A mind that isn’t in control of itself, that doesn’t understand its power to regulate itself, will be jerked around by external events and unquestioned impulses.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 101)
“While I generally find that great myths are great precisely because they represent and embody great universal truths, the myth of romantic love is a dreadful lie. Perhaps it is a necessary lie in that it ensures the survival of the falling-in-love experience that traps us into marriage. But as a psychiatrist I weep in my heart almost daily for the ghastly confusion and suffering that this myth fosters. Millions of people waste vast amounts of energy desperately and futilely attempting to make the reality of their lives conform to the unreality of the myth.”
M. Scott Peck, via Sunbeams (Page 72)
“All that we do
Is touched with ocean, yet we remain
On the shore of what we know.”
Richard Wilbur, via Sunbeams (Page 72)
“Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies.”
Samuel Butler, via Sunbeams (Page 71) (Read Matt’s Blog On This Quote)
“Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are.”
José Ortega y Gasset, via Sunbeams (Page 70)
“Every day matters. The awareness of our mortality can help us pursue a goal. We all have a limited amount of time on earth. Those who live in active awareness of this reality are more likely to identify goals and make progress toward them. Or to put it another way: Everyone dies, but not everyone truly lives.”
Chris Guillebeau, The Happiness of Pursuit (Page 268)
“It has become ever more clear to me that if I had spent my life avoiding any and all potential risks, I would have missed doing most of the things that have comprised the best years of my life.”
Phoebe Snetsinger, via The Happiness of Pursuit (Page 262)
“It is always important to know when something has reached its end. Closing circles, shutting doors, finishing chapters, it doesn’t matter what we call it; what matters is to leave in the past those moments in life that are over.”
Paulo Coelho, via The Happiness of Pursuit (Page 257)
“The right time to leave is when you’re ready, not just when someone else makes the decision for you. When a good thing reaches its natural end, don’t drag it out. If you don’t like the menu, leave the restaurant.”
Chris Guillebeau, The Happiness of Pursuit (Page 234)
“When you have completed 95 percent of your journey, you are only halfway there.”
Japanese Proverb, via The Happiness of Pursuit (Page 225)
“The right kind of misadventures—the ones that yield information—can produce confidence.”
Chris Guillebeau, The Happiness of Pursuit (Page 222) (Read Matt’s Blog On this Quote)
“If you’re going to worry about something, worry about the cost of not pursuing your dream.”
Chris Guillebeau, The Happiness of Pursuit (Page 222)
“Regret is what you should fear the most. If something is going to keep you awake at night, let it be the fear of not following your dream. Be afraid of settling.”
Chris Guillebeau, The Happiness of Pursuit (Page 220)
“The purpose is to identify not with the body which is falling away, but with the consciousness of which it is a vehicle. This is something I learned from my myths. Am I the bulb that carries the light, or am I the light of which the bulb is the vehicle? If you can identify with the consciousness, you can watch this thing go like an old car. There goes the fender, etc. But it’s expected; and then gradually the whole thing drops off and consciousness rejoins consciousness. I live with these myths—and they tell me to do this, to identify with the Christ or the Shiva in me. And that doesn’t die, it resurrects. It is an essential experience of any mystical realization that you die to your flesh and are born to your spirit. You identify with the consciousness in life—and that is the god.”
Joseph Campbell, via Sunbeams (Page 70)
“The most beautiful music of all is the music of what happens.”
Irish Proverb, via Sunbeams (Page 70)
“If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.”
Albert Camus, via Sunbeams (Page 70)
“You can buy a Plume Blanche diamond-encrusted sofa for close to two hundred thousand dollars. It’s also possible to hire one person to kill another person for five hundred dollars. Remember that next time you hear someone ramble on about how the market decides what things are worth. The market might be rational… but the people who comprise it are not.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 97)
“The foot feels the foot when it feels the ground.”
Buddha, via Sunbeams (Page 69) (Read Matt’s Blog On This Quote)