“In the evening of our lives we shall be examined in love.”
St. John of the Cross, via Sunbeams (Page 154)
“The mind must be given relaxation—it will rise improved and sharper after a good break. Just as rich fields must not be forced—for they will quickly lose their fertility if never given a break—so constant work on the anvil will fracture the force of the mind. But it regains its powers if it is set free and relaxed for a while. Constant work gives rise to a certain kind of dullness and feebleness in the rational soul.”
Seneca, On Tranquility Of Mind, The Daily Stoic (Page 381)
“You can’t guarantee that people won’t hurt or betray you—they will, be it a breakup or something as big and blinding as death. But evading heartbreak is how we miss our people, our purpose. I make a pact with myself and send it off into the desert: May I be awake enough to notice when love appears and bold enough to pursue it without knowing where it will lead.“
Suleika Jaoaud, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 318)
“You can’t force clarity when there is none to be had yet.”
Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 315)
“Most of us are afraid of dying. But sometimes this fear begs the question: To protect what exactly? For a lot of people the answer is: hours of television, gossiping, gorging, wasting potential, reporting to a boring job, and on and on and on. Except, in the strictest sense, is this actually a life? Is this worth gripping so tightly and being afraid of losing? It doesn’t sound like it.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 379)
“It’s easier to quote, to rely on the wise words of others. Especially when the people you’re deferring to are such towering figures! It’s harder (and more intimidating) to venture out on your own and express your own thoughts. But how do you think those wise and true quotes from those towering figures were created in the first place? Your own experiences have value. You have accumulated your own wisdom too. Stake your claim. Put something down for the ages—in words and also in example.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 378)
“The excursion is the same when you go looking for your sorrow as when you go looking for your joy.”
Eudora Welty, via Sunbeams (Page 153)
“You have to shift from the gloom and doom and focus instead on what you love. That’s all you can do in the face of these things. Love the people around you. Love the life you have. I can’t think of a more powerful response to life’s sorrows than loving.”
Katherine, via Between Two Kingdoms (Page 312)
“I used to think healing meant ridding the body and the heart of anything that hurt. It meant putting your pain behind you, leaving it in the past. But, I’m learning that’s not how it works. Healing is figuring out how to coexist with the pain that will always live inside of you, without pretending it isn’t there or allowing it to hijack your day. It is learning to confront ghosts and to carry what lingers. It is learning to embrace the people I love now instead of protecting against a future in which I am gutted by their loss.”
Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 312)
“If death is truly the end, then what is there exactly to fear? For everything from your fears to your pain receptors to your worries and your remaining wishes, they will perish with you. As frightening as death might seem, remember: it contains within it the end of fear.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 376)
“Being an artist is not for the faint of heart. It involves a lot of risk-taking, a lot of bravery, and a lot of not subscribing nor giving a fuck about what others think. We dance around uncertainties, the unknown, and the extraordinary every single day. But we live our lives based on a feeling, a vision, some voice telling us to paint it, write it, draw it, tell it, dance it, act it. We make worlds so others can see, tell stories so others can learn how to speak, dance and make music so people can learn how to hear, capture moments so people can see the unseen, paint colors and share emotions so people can learn how to express, create alternate universes so people can wake up to all the possibilities they haven’t afforded for themselves. Don’t go into the arts, they’ll say. But without creativity and art – the living are just walking half dead.”
Stephanie Dandan, Blog
“A brief guide to compounding: If you don’t enjoy something, you won’t stick with it. If you don’t stick with it, it won’t compound. Being interested precedes the results.”
James Clear, Blog
“Markets often persuade us that we don’t have enough. Communities remind us that we do.”
Seth Godin, Blog
“We’ve discovered that the earth isn’t flat; that we won’t fall off its edges, and our experience as a species has changed as a result. Maybe we’ll soon find out that the self isn’t ‘flat’ either, and that death is as real and yet as deceptive as the horizon; that we don’t fall out of life either.”
Seth, Jane Roberts’ Seth Speaks, via Sunbeams (Page 151)
“Talking about the ones we’ve lost keeps them alive.”
Katherine, via Between Two Kingdoms (Page 309)
“Grief isn’t meant to be silenced—to live in the body and be carried alone.”
Katherine, via Between Two Kingdoms (Page 308)
“The power of story is to heal and to sustain. And if we are brave enough to tell our own story, we realize we’re not alone, again and again.”
Katherine, via Between Two Kingdoms (Page 307)
“Life is long if you know how to use it.”
Seneca, The Daily Stoic (Page 369)
“If we’d like the world to work better, more fairly and with more of a long-term view, we have to identify the systems that push participants to do the opposite. And then we need to consistently and persistently work to change the incentives that cause the entities in those systems to act the way they do.”
Seth Godin, Blog
“It’s a kind of test, Mary, and it’s the only kind that amounts to anything. When something rotten like this happens, then you have your choice. You start to really be alive, or you start to die. That’s all.”
James Agee, A Death In The Family, via Sunbeams (Page 150)