“In your life you’ve faced obstacles, inner and outer, that have prevented you from becoming the person you were ‘meant to be’ or ‘are capable of being’ and that is what we are going to recover. That’s why we call this process Recovery; we recover the ‘you’ that you were meant to be.”
Russell Brand, Recovery (Page 42)
“Nothing you write, if you hope to be good, will ever come out as you first hoped.”
Lillian Hellman, Sunbeams (Page 31)
“The next time someone gets upset near you—crying, yelling, breaking something, being pointed or cruel—watch how quickly this statement will stop them cold: ‘I hope this is making you feel better.’ Because, of course, it isn’t. Only in the bubble of extreme emotion can we justify any of that kind of behavior—and when called to account for it, we usually feel sheepish or embarrassed.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 48)
“Oddly, counterintuitively, in our culture of individualism and self-centered valour, it is by surrendering that we can begin to succeed. It is by ‘admitting that we have no power’ that we can begin the process of accessing all the power we will ever need.”
Russell Brand, Recovery (Page 27)
“I live in negotiation with a shadow side that has to be respected. There is a wound. I believe that this is more than a characteristic of addiction. I think it is a part of being human, to carry a wound, a flaw and again, paradoxically, it is only by accepting it that we can progress.”
Russell Brand, Recovery (Page 26)
“There is hunger for ordinary bread, and there is hunger for love, for kindness, for thoughtfulness; and this is the great poverty that makes people suffer so much.”
Mother Teresa, Sunbeams (Page 29)
“We do not learn only from great minds; we learn from everyone, if only we observe and inquire. I received my greatest lesson in aesthetics from an old man in an Athenian taverna. Night after night he sat alone at the same table, drinking his wine with precisely the same movements. I finally asked him why he did this and he said, ‘Young man, I first look at my glass to please my eyes, then I take it in my hand to please my hand, then I bring it to my nose to please my nostrils, and I am just about to bring it to my lips when I hear a small voice in my ears, ‘How about me?’ So I tap my glass on the table before I drink from it. I thus please all five senses.'”
C. A. Doxiadis, Sunbeams (Page 29)
“Beyond today your projections of life are conceptual. You don’t have to not drink for twenty years today. You don’t have to give up white bread for all eternity, right now. And if you do make it through today, and wake up tomorrow, what does it really matter that you didn’t act out yesterday? I mean, you’re not accumulating tokens for punitive pleasure. This ‘one day at a time’ cliché when taken plainly is no less profound than any ‘be in the moment’ Eastern wisdom I’ve since encountered. Today is all I have.”
Russell Brand, Recovery (Page 25)
“My authority comes not from a steep and certain mountain top of po-faced righteousness. This manual for Self-Realization comes not from the mountain but from the mud. Being human is a ‘me too’ business. We are all in the mud together. My qualification is that I am more addicted, more narcissistic, more driven by lust and the need for power and recognition.”
Russell Brand, Recovery (Page 6)
“We adapt to the misery of an unloving home, of unfulfilling work. Of empty friendships and lacquered alienation. The 12 Step program, which has saved my life, will change the life of anyone who embraces it. I have seen it work many times with people with addiction issues of every hue: drugs, sex, relationships, food, work, smoking, alcohol, technology, pornography, hoarding, gambling, everything. Because the instinct that drives the compulsion is universal. It is an attempt to solve the problem of disconnection, alienation and tepid despair, because the problem is ultimately ‘being human’ in an environment that is curiously ill-equipped to deal with the challenges that entails. We are all on the addiction scale.”
Russell Brand, Recovery (Page 4)
“Our difficulty is that human consciousness has not adjusted itself to a relational and integrated view of nature. We must see that consciousness is neither an isolated soul nor the mere function of a single nervous system, but of that totality of interrelated stars and galaxies which makes a nervous system possible.”
Alan Watts, Sunbeams (Page 28)
“Compassion simply stated is leaving other people alone. You don’t lay trips. You exist as a statement of your own level of evolution. You are available to another human being, to provide what they need, to the extent that they ask. But you begin to see that it is a fallacy to think that you can impose a trip on another person.”
Ram Dass, Sunbeams (Page 28)
“Who then is invincible? The one who cannot be upset by anything outside their reasoned choice.”
Epictetus, via The Daily Stoic (Page 44)
“Getting worked up, getting excited, nervously pacing—these intense, pained, and anxious moments show us at our most futile and servile. Staring at the clock, at the ticker, at the next checkout lane over, at the sky—it’s as if we all belong to a religious cult that believes the gods of fate will only give us what we want if we sacrifice our peace of mind.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 43)
“…It is impossible to define the meaning of life in a general way. Questions about the meaning of life can never be answered by sweeping statements. ‘Life’ does not mean something vague, but something very real and concrete, just as life’s tasks are also very real and concrete. They form man’s destiny, which is different and unique for each individual… When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task, his single and unique task… No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden. For us, as prisoners, these thoughts were not speculations far removed from reality. They were the only thoughts that could be of help to us. They kept us from despair, even when there was no chance of coming out of it alive.”
Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search For Meaning, via Sunbeams (Page 27)
“We would never let another person jerk us around the way we let our impulses do. It’s time we start seeing it that way—that we’re not puppets that can be made to dance this way or that way just because we feel like it. We should be the ones in control, not our emotions, because we are independent, self-sufficient people.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 42)
“Why do athletes talk trash to each other? Why do they deliberately say offensive and nasty things to their competitors when the refs aren’t looking? To provoke a reaction. Distracting and angering opponents is an easy way to knock them off their game. Try to remember that when you find yourself getting mad. Anger is not impressive or tough—it’s a mistake. It’s weakness.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 41)
“Keep this thought handy when you feel a fit of rage coming on—it isn’t manly to be enraged. Rather, gentleness and civility are more human, and therefore manlier. A real man doesn’t give way to anger and discontent, and such a person has strength, courage, and endurance—unlike the angry and complaining. The nearer a man comes to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, via The Daily Stoic (Page 41)
“When I was a child, I waited for my mind to grow, for my experiences to accumulate and my choices to solidify, taking shape into the likeness of a person. That person, or that likeness of one, had belonged. I was of that mountain, the mountain that had made me. It was only as I grew older that I wondered if how I had started is how I would end—if the first shape a person takes is their only true shape.”
Tara Westover, Educated
“…You are no longer Buddhist or a Hindu or a Christian or a Jew or a Moslem. You are love, you are truth. And love and truth have no form. They flow into forms. But the word is never the same as that which the word connotes. The word ‘God’ is not God, the word ‘Mother’ is not Mother, the word ‘Self’ is not Self, the word ‘moment’ is not the moment. All of these words are empty. We’re playing at the level of intellect, feeding that thing in us that keeps wanting to understand. And here we are, all the words we’ve said are gone. Where did they go? Do you remember them all? Empty, empty. If you heard them, you are at this moment empty. You’re ready for the next word. And the word will go through you. You don’t have to know anything: that’s what’s so funny about it. You get so simple. You’re empty. You know nothing. You simply are wisdom—not becoming anything, just being everything.”
Ram Dass, Sunbeams (Page 25)