“In the face of suffering, one has no right to turn away, not to see. In the face of injustice, one may not look the other way. When someone suffers, and it is not you, he comes first. His very suffering gives him priority… To watch over a man who grieves is a more urgent duty than to think of God.”
Elie Wiesel, via Sunbeams (Page 66)
“Do you change people first or do you change society? I believe this is a false dichotomy. You have to change both simultaneously. If you’re changing only yourself and have no concern for changing the society, something goes awry. If you’re changing only society but not changing yourself, something goes awry, as tended to happen in the late 1960s. Now, ‘simultaneously’ may be an overstatement, because I think there are periods when one has to concentrate on one or the other. And there are periods in a society, in a culture, when the emphasis is appropriate only on one or the other. What I’m trying to say is, never lose sight of either the internal world or the external world, the peace within and the peace based on justice on the outside.”
David Dellinger, via Sunbeams (Page 66)
“The diseases of the rational soul are long-standing and hardened vices, such as greed and ambition—they have put the soul in a straitjacket and have begun to be permanent evils inside it. To put it briefly, this sickness is an unrelenting distortion of judgment, so things that are only mildly desirable are vigorously sought after.”
Seneca, Moral Letters, via The Daily Stoic (Page 93)
“We’re all doing time. As soon as we get born, we find ourselves assigned to one little body, one set of desires and fears, one family, city, state, country, and planet. Who can ever understand exactly why or how it comes down as it does? The bottom line is, here we are. Whatever, wherever, whenever we are, this is what we’ve got. It’s up to us whether we do it as easy time or hard time.”
Bo Lozoff, via Sunbeams (Page 65)
“Man’s mind is a mirror of a universe that mirrors man’s mind.”
Joseph Chilton Pearce, via Sunbeams (Page 65)
“At the innermost core of all loneliness is a deep and powerful yearning for union with one’s lost self.”
Brendan Francis, via Sunbeams (Page 65)
“A degree on a wall means you’re educated as much as shoes on your feet mean you’re walking. It’s a start, but hardly sufficient. Just as you can walk plenty well without shoes, you don’t need to step into a classroom to understand the basic, fundamental reality of nature and of our proper role in it.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 92)
“People seek retreats for themselves in the country, by the sea, or in the mountains. You are very much in the habit of yearning for those same things. But this is entirely the trait of a base person, when you can, at any moment, find such a retreat in yourself. For nowhere can you find a more peaceful and less busy retreat than in your own soul—especially if on close inspection it is filled with ease, which I say is nothing more than being well-ordered. Treat yourself often to this retreat and be renewed.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, via The Daily Stoic (Page 91)
“Edit your life frequently and ruthlessly. It’s your masterpiece after all.”
Nathan W. Morris (Read Matt’s Blog On This Quote)
“You know how you meet people and they ask, ‘What do you do?’ You can always say that you’re a teacher or a student, an accountant or an artist, or whatever your vocation. But once you have a quest, you have another answer, too. Your identity isn’t tied to a job; your identity is who you really are. I’m trying to visit every country in the world. I’m on a quest to publish one million processed photos. I’m going to produce the largest symphony ever performed.”
Chris Guillebeau, The Happiness of Pursuit (Page 123)
Always keep Ithaca on your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years;
and to anchor at the island when you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.
Constantine Cavafy, Ithaca, via The Happiness of Pursuit (Page 114)
“If you want to make every day an adventure, all you have to do is prioritize adventure. It has to become more important than routine.”
Chris Guillebeau, The Happiness of Pursuit (Page 87)
“A dog is not considered a good dog because he is a good barker. A man is not considered a good man because he is a good talker.”
Chuang Tzu, via Sunbeams (Page 64)
“To a worm in horseradish, the whole world is horseradish.”
Yiddish proverb, via Sunbeams (Page 64) (Read Matt’s Blog On This Quote)
“I may wish to be free from torture, but if the time comes for me to endure it, I’ll wish to bear it courageously with bravery and honor. Wouldn’t I prefer not to fall into war? But if war does befall me, I’ll wish to carry nobly the wounds, starvation, and other necessities of war. Neither am I so crazy as to desire illness, but if I must suffer illness, I’ll wish to do nothing rash or dishonorable. The point is not to wish for these adversities, but for the virtue to make adversities bearable.”
Seneca, Moral Letters, via The Daily Stoic (Page 90)
“Everything good needs time. Don’t do work in a hurry. Go into details; it pays in every way. Time means power for your work. Mediocrity is always in a rush; but whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing with consideration. For genius is nothing more nor less than doing well what anyone can do badly.”
Amelia Barr
“Some things are better off ignored than attacked. Attention is the oxygen of conflict. When you fight a problem, you breathe life into it. When you starve a problem of your attention, you suffocate it. In a surprising number of cases, the way to solve a problem is to ignore it.”
James Clear, Blog (Read Matt’s Blog On This Quote)
“I’d like to repeat the advice that I gave you before, in that I think you really should make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.”
Chriss McCandless, Into The Wild, via The Happiness of Pursuit (Page 84)
“As much as it sounds trite to ‘live like you’re dying’ or ‘live every day as if it were your last,’ that’s exactly what many people obsessed with a quest do. This shift from an intellectual awareness that we will someday die to an emotional awareness can be a guiding light to discovering what really matters.”
Chris Guillebeau, The Happiness of Pursuit (Page 54)
“All of us will someday die. Yet not all of us live in a state of active awareness of this reality. In the words of a great Bob Dylan song, ‘He not busy being born is busy dying,’ and perhaps some of us are busier than others.”
Chris Guillebeau, The Happiness of Pursuit (Page 58)