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    “‘Always remember,’ Churchill once reassured his wife, ‘that I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.’ This is a critical test. Don’t just think about what a certain pleasure will give, think about what it will take out of you. Think about how what you’re chasing is going to age. Think about how you’ll think about it after—during the refractory period, during your hangover, when your pants are too tight, when you catch yourself in the mirror months from now and wonder how this happened.”

    Ryan Holiday, Discipline Is Destiny (Page 152)

      “No one who is a slave to their urges or to sloth, no one without strength or a good schedule, can create a great life. Certainly they will be too consumed with themselves to be of much good for anyone else. Those who tell themselves they are free to do anything will, inevitably, be chained to something.”

      Ryan Holiday, Discipline Is Destiny (Page 92)

        “I would die without my [insert luxury item], we’ll say in jest. How can anybody live like this? we’ll ask not so rhetorically. The answer? They’re stronger than you. ‘The more a man is,’ the editor Maxwell Perkins had inscribed on his mantel, ‘the less he wants.’ When you strip away the unnecessary and the excessive, what’s left is you. What’s left is what’s important.”

        Ryan Holiday, Discipline Is Destiny (Page 36)

          “When we desire more than we need, we make ourselves vulnerable. When we overextend ourselves, when we chase, we are not self-sufficient. This is why Cato declined expensive gifts, why he did his political work for no pay, why he traveled with few servants and kept things simple. A Spartan king was once asked what the Spartans got from their ‘spartan’ habits. ‘Freedom is what we reap from this way of life,’ he told him.”

          Ryan Holiday, Discipline Is Destiny (Page 34)

            “Modern marketing culture is designed to amplify our desires. To turn faint wants into desperate needs. As a result, we’re intimately familiar with what we want. And we strive to get it. The problem with getting what you want is that now you have a hole, because you don’t want that thing anymore, you have it. We then are on a cycle, eager to find a new thing to want. Which means that the thing you used to want but now have fades in comparison. There’s a more resilient path: To commit to wanting what you have.”

            Seth Godin

              “Everything we do is for the purpose of altering consciousness. We form friendships so that we can feel love and avoid loneliness. We eat specific foods to enjoy their fleeting presence on our tongues. We read for the pleasure of thinking another person’s thoughts. Every waking moment—and even in our dreams—we struggle to direct the flow of sensation, emotion, and cognition toward states of consciousness that we value.”

              Sam Harris, Waking Up (Page 186)

                “One has to learn to be patiently relaxed, and then the miracle of miracles happens: One day when you are really relaxed, something suddenly changes. A curtain disappears, and you see things as they are. If your eyes are too full of desires, expectation, longing, they cannot see the truth. The eyes are covered with the dust of desire. All search is futile. Search is a byproduct of the mind. To be in a state of nonsearch is the great moment of transformation. All the meditations are just preparations for that moment. They are not real meditations but just preparations so that one day you can simply sit, doing nothing, desiring nothing.”

                Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 283)

                  “Desire is what you want; purpose is the flowering of what you are. Desire tends to weaken over time, whereas purpose strengthens the more you lean into it. Desire can be depleting because it’s insatiable; purpose is empowering—it’s a stronger engine. Purpose has a way of contextualizing life’s unavoidable sufferings and making them meaningful and worthwhile.”

                  Will Smith, Will (Page 314)

                    “You tell me what you want, and I’ll tell you who you are.”

                    Will Smith, Will (Page 212)

                      “Desires that arise in agitation are more aligned with your ego. Desires that arise in stillness are more aligned with your soul.”

                      Cory Muscara, Twitter

                        “To attract something that you want, become as joyful as you think that thing would make you.”

                        Martha Beck

                          “We often resist most deeply the things that we want most.”

                          Brianna Wiest, The Mountain Is You (Page 118)