“The more a person analyzes his inner self, the more insignificant he seems to himself. This is the first lesson of wisdom. Let us be humble, and we will become wise. Let us know our weakness, and it will give us power.”
William Ellery Channing, via A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 53)
“If you want to study yourself—look into the hearts of other people. If you want to study other people—look into your own heart.”
Friedrich Von Schiller, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 41)
“This can be the source of your unhappiness—your lack of connection to who you are and what makes you unique. The first move toward mastery is always inward—learning who you really are and reconnecting with that innate force. Knowing it with clarity, you will find your way to the proper career path and everything else will fall into place. It is never too late to start this process.”
Robert Greene, The Daily Laws (Page 13)
“If you want to write the truth, you must write about yourself. I am the only real truth I know.”
Jean Rhys, via Sunbeams (Page 159)
“Your duty is to be; and not to be this or that.”
Ramana Maharshi, via Sunbeams (Page 155)
“It strikes me that the redwoods have accomplished, without effort or ego, what I have struggled so hard to do. They make existence, as I conceive of it—time measured in hundred-day increments—seem laughably naïve and nearsighted. I feel so tiny and rootless in their midst. Right now, I am no redwood. I am a speck, a spore surfing the breeze, directionless and susceptible, blown any which way, without the faintest clue about where I’ll land.”
Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 304)
“That is what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.”
Jeanette Winterson, via Between Two Kingdoms (Page 107)
“I’d always imagined myself as the kind of writer who would help other people tell their stories, but increasingly I found myself gravitating toward the first person. Illness had turned my gaze inward.”
Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 107)