“I don’t hold myself to longer hours; if I did, I wouldn’t gain by it. The only reason I write is because it interests me more than any other activity I’ve ever found. I like riding, going to operas and concerts, travel in the west; but on the whole writing interests me more than anything else. If I made a chore of it, my enthusiasm would die. I make it an adventure every day. I get more entertainment from it than any I could buy, except the privilege of hearing a few great musicians and singers. To listen to them interests me as much as a good morning’s work.”
Willa Cather, via Daily Rituals (Page 199) | Read Matt’s Blog on this quote ➜
“As you grow older you will find that your desires are never really fulfilled. In fulfillment there is always the shadow of frustration, and in your heart there is not a song but a cry. The desire to become—to become a great man, a great saint, a great this or that—has no end and therefore no fulfillment; its demand is ever for the ‘more,’ and such desire always breeds agony, misery, wars. But when one is free of all desire to become, there is a state of being whose action is totally different. It is. That which is has no time. It does not think in terms of fulfillment. Its very being is in its fulfillment.”
J. Krishnamurti, Think On These Things, via Sunbeams (Page 46)
George St-Pierre | Read Matt’s Blog on this quote ➜
When you pay attention to detail, the big picture will take care of itself.
“I’ve never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think that the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again.”
John Updike, via Daily Rituals (Page 195) | Read Matt’s Blog on this quote ➜
“A solid routine saves you from giving up.”
John Updike, via Daily Rituals (Page 195)
“Some pianists say they are the slaves of their instrument. If I am its slave, all I can say is—I have a very kind master.”
Sergey Rachmaninoff, Daily Rituals (Page 179)
“Whoever wants to see a brick must look at its pores, and must keep his eyes close to it. But whoever wants to see a cathedral cannot see it as he sees a brick. This demands a respect for distance.”
José Ortega y Gasset, via Sunbeams (Page 45)
“If someone sends you an angry email but you never see it, did it actually happen? In other words, these situations require our participation, context, and categorization in order to be ‘bad.’ Our reaction is what actually decides whether harm has occurred. If we feel that we’ve been wronged and get angry, of course that’s how it will seem. If we raise our voice because we feel we’re being confronted, naturally a confrontation will ensue. But if we retain control of ourselves, we decide whether to label something good or bad.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 64)
“Smart isn’t easily measurable. Neither is beautiful, good or successful. And especially happy. A high SAT score is a measure of whether or not you scored well on the SAT. That’s it. A bank balance is a measure of how much money you have in the bank. That’s all. In the face of the difficulty the system has in measuring things that don’t measure, we create proxies. Things like popularity as a proxy for whether a work of human creativity has worth or not. It’s a method built to process commodities instead of people, and it’s running amok.”
Seth Godin, Blog
“I keep to [my] routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.”
Haruki Murakami, via Daily Rituals (Page 60) | Read Matt’s Blog on this quote ➜
“You can’t steer a stationary ship.”
Nicolas Cole | Read Matt’s Blog on this quote ➜
“[René] Descartes believed that idleness was essential to good mental work, and he made sure not to overexert himself.
Mason Currey, Daily Rituals (Page 151)
“My life has been my music, it’s always come first, but the music ain’t worth nothing if you can’t lay it on the public.”
Louis Armstrong, via Daily Rituals (Page 114) (Read Matt’s Blog On This Quote)
“Circumstances are incapable of considering or caring for your feelings, your anxiety, or your excitement. They don’t care about your reaction. They are not people. So stop acting like getting worked up is having an impact on a given situation. Situations don’t care at all.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 63)
“I don’t believe in draining the reservoir, do you see? I believe in getting up from the typewriter, away from it, while I still have things to say.”
Henry Miller, via Daily Rituals (Page 53) | Read Matt’s Blog on this quote ➜
“I’ve realized that somebody who’s tired and needs a rest, and goes on working all the same is a fool.”
Carl Jung, via Daily Rituals (Page 41)
“A modern stoic knows that the surest way to discipline passion is to discipline time: decide what you want or ought to do during the day, then always do it at exactly the same moment every day, and passion will give you no trouble.”
W. H. Auden, via Daily Rituals (Page 3)
“Each phenomenon on earth is an allegory, and each allegory is an open gate through which the soul, if it is ready, can pass into the interior of the world where you and I and day and night are all one. In the course of his life, every human being comes upon that open gate, here or there along the way; everyone is sometimes assailed by the thought that everything visible is an allegory and that behind the allegory live spirit and eternal life. Few, to be sure, pass through the gate and give up the beautiful illusion for the surmised reality of what lies within.”
Hermann Hesse, Strange News From Another Star, via Sunbeams (Page 42)
“The human condition is such that pain and effort are not just symptoms which can be removed without changing life itself; they are rather the modes in which life itself, together with the necessity to which it is bound, makes itself felt. For mortals, the ‘easy life of the gods’ would be a lifeless life.”
Hannah Arendt, Sunbeams (Page 41)
To want nothing makes one invincible—because nothing lies outside your control. This doesn’t just go for not wanting the easy-to-criticize things like wealth or fame—the kinds of folly that we see illustrated in some of our most classic plays and fables. That green light that Gatsby strove for can represent seemingly good things too, like love or a noble cause. But it can wreck someone all the same.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 61)