“Loss is one of our deepest fears. Ignorance and pretending don’t make things any better. They just mean the loss will be all the more jarring when it occurs.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 349)
“Devastation—that feeling that we’re absolutely crushed and shocked by an event—is a factor of how unlikely we considered that event in the first place. No one is wrecked by the fact that it’s snowing in the winter, because we’ve accepted (and even anticipated) this turn of events. What about the occurrences that surprise us? We might not be so shocked if we took the time to consider their possibility.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 347)
“Perhaps today will be the day when we experience happiness or wisdom. Don’t try to grab that moment and hold on to it with all your might. It’s not under your control how long it lasts. Enjoy it, recognize it, remember it. Having it for a moment is the same as having it forever.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 346)
“Not every problem needs to be overcome, just the ones stopping you from getting where you want to be.”
Ann Hill, Twitter
“’How much could I lose?’ is not merely a financial question. If I make this choice: How much time could I lose? How much sanity could I lose? How much reputation could I lose? How much happiness could I lose? Opportunity cost is about a lot more than money.”
James Clear, Blog
“The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and the vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.”
Tom Robbins, Still Life With Woodpecker, via Sunbeams (Page 144)
“Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.”
Hannah Arendt, via Sunbeams (Page 144)
“The average man seeks certainty in the eyes of the onlooker and calls that self-confidence. The warrior seeks impeccability in his own eyes and calls that humbleness.”
John Amodeo, via Sunbeams (Page 144)
“They say that in difficult times you find out who your friends are, but mostly I found out whom I wanted to befriend. Some people I thought I could count on disappeared, while others I barely knew did more than I ever expected.”
Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 224)
“When life brings you to the floor, there is a choice: You can allow the worst thing that’s ever happened to you to hijack your remaining days, or you can claw your way back into motion.”
Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 224)
“It took me a while to say I was a cancer patient. Then, for a long time, I was only that. It’s time for me to figure out who I am now.”
Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 221)
“Life is in a constant state of change. And so are we. To get upset by things is to wrongly assume that they will last. To kick ourselves or blame others is grabbing at the wind. To resent change is to wrongly assume that you have a choice in the matter. Everything is change. Embrace that. Flow with it.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 340)
“Every great opportunity has many reasons why it could fail. You have to trust your ability to solve problems along the way. People who look for reasons why things won’t work, struggle to take action. People who look for reasons why things will work—and solve problems as they arise—make things happen.”
James Clear, Blog
“It’s better to be alone than to spend time with toxic people. It’s better to do nothing than to work on something that doesn’t matter. It’s better to rest than to climb the wrong mountain.”
James Clear, Blog
“In my lowest moments, I fantasize about getting sick again. I miss the sense of purpose and clarity I felt while in treatment—the way staring your mortality straight in the eye simplifies things and reroutes your focus to what really matters. I miss the hospital’s ecosystem. Like me, everyone there was broken, but out here, among the living, I feel like an imposter, overwhelmed and unable to function.”
Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 214)
“Moving on. It’s a phrase I obsess over: what it means, what it doesn’t how to do it for real. It seemed so easy at first, too easy, and it’s starting to dawn on me that moving on is a myth—a lie you sell yourself on when your life has become unendurable. It’s the delusion that you can build a barricade between yourself and your past—that you can ignore your pain, that you can bury your great love with a new relationship, that you are among the lucky few who get to skip over the hard work of grieving and healing and rebuilding—and that all of this, when it catches up to you, won’t come for blood.”
Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 208)
“Grief is a ghost that visits without warning. It comes in the night and rips you from your sleep. It fills your chest with shards of glass. It interrupts you mid-laugh when you’re at a party, chastising you that, just for a moment, you’ve forgotten. It haunts you until it becomes a part of you, shadowing you breath for breath.”
Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 190)
“Anyone with a smartphone is familiar with the feeling of having somehow, as if by accident, lost a precious hour to their device. But thinking ill of that behavior only induces guilt and makes the problem worse. It creates a moral hierarchy that some actions are good, and some are bad. We have to realize that anything we want to do with our time is fine as long as we do it on our schedule.”
Nir Eyal
“Melissa painted self-portraits from bed; I wrote self-portraits from bed. Watercolors and words were the drugs we preferred for our pain. We were learning that sometimes the only way to endure suffering is to transform it into art.”
Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 157)