“I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument while the song I came to sing remains unsung.”
Rabindranath Tagore, via Sunbeams (Page 148)
“People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, via Sunbeams (Page 148)
“The mind cannot long act the role of the heart”
François La Rochefoucauld, via Sunbeams (Page 148)
“If you wait for tomorrow, tomorrow comes. If you don’t wait for tomorrow, tomorrow comes.”
Senegalese Proverb, via Sunbeams (Page 148)
“We may claw and fight and work to own things, but those things can be taken away in a second. The same goes for other things we like to think are ‘ours’ but are equally precarious: our status, our physical health or strength, our relationships. How can these really be ours if something other than us—fate, bad luck, death, and so on—can dispossess us of them without notice? So what do we own? Just our lives—and not for long.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 360)
“Let us prepare our minds as if we’d come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s books each day… The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time.”
Seneca, Moral Letters, via The Daily Stoic (Page 349)
“Having a billion dollars is great, but having a billion seconds is priceless. There is no amount of money in the world that can purchase immortality. Every human eventually runs out of time.”
Anthony Pompliano, Blog
“Perhaps the greatest test of love is the way we act in times of need. It is the moment of accountability that all relationships seem to arc toward.”
Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 281)
“At times, my heart feels so haunted that there’s no room for the living—for the possibility of new love, new loss.”
Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 289)
“I’m realizing that if I am to cross the distance between near-death and renewal, instead of trying to bury my pain, I must use it as a guide to know myself better. In confronting my past, I have to reckon not only with the pain of losing other people but also with the pain I’ve caused others. I must keep seeking truths and teachers on these long, lonely stretches of highway even when—especially when—the search brings discomfort.”
Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 283)
“Turn your mind away from the things that provoke it. If you find that discussing politics at the dinner table leads to fighting, why do you keep bringing it up? If your sibling’s life choices bother you, why don’t you stop picking at them and making them your concern? The same goes for so many other sources of aggravation. It’s not a sign of weakness to shut them out. Instead, it’s a sign of strong will.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 349)
“Untamed fear consumes you, becomes you, until what you are most afraid of turns alive.”
Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 281)
“It is hard to rage at something as nebulous as cancer. You have to steer the trajectory of your anger, ideally toward a canvas or a notebook, before it hurdles toward a human target.”
Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 281)
“While it’s easy to destroy the past, it’s far more difficult to forget it.”
Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 279)
“I told everyone I was fine, when in fact I needed the privacy to fall apart.”
Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 270)
“I tell my kids, what is the difference between a hero and a coward? What is the difference between being [cowardly] and being brave? No difference. Only what you do. They both feel the same. They both fear dying and getting hurt. The man who is [cowardly] refuses to face up to what he’s got to face. The hero is more disciplined and he fights those feelings off and he does what he has to do. But they both feel the same, the hero and the coward. People who watch you judge you on what you do, not how you feel.”
Cus D’amato, Bad Intentions
“To quell my own fears, I needed space from theirs.”
Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 252)
“Odd things happen when you’re on a road trip alone. The monotony of driving becomes meditative: The mind unwrinkles. As the usual anxieties and concerns vacate, daydreams flit in. Occasionally, a wisp of an idea appears out of nowhere only to recede, a shimmery mirage in a desert. Other times, an avalanche of memories tumbles forth, loosened by an old song on the radio or a deja vu—inducing landscape. The interplay between geography and memory becomes a conversation. They spark and spur each other.”
Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 244)
“Recovery isn’t a gentle self-care spree that restores you to a pre-illness state. Though the word may suggest otherwise, recovery is not about salvaging the old at all. It’s about accepting that you must forsake a familiar self forever, in favor of one that is being newly born. It is an act of brute, terrifying discovery.”
Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 234)