"Of all the beautiful truths pertaining to the soul which have been restored and brought to light in this age, none is more gladdening or fruitful of divine promise and confidence than this - that man is the master of thought, the molder of character, and maker and shaper of condition, environment, and destiny."
"A man only begins to be a man when he ceases to whine and revile, and commences to search for the hidden justice which regulates his life. And as he adapts his mind to that regulating factor, he ceases to accuse others as the cause of his condition, and builds himself up in strong and noble thoughts; he ceases to kick against circumstances, but begins to use them as aids to his more rapid progress, and as a means of discovering the hidden powers and possibilities within himself."
"Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about. There is a certain kind of person who is so dominated by the desire to be loved for himself alone that he has constantly to test those around him by tiresome behavior what he says and does must be admired, not because it is intrinsically admirable, but because it is his remark, his act. Does not this explain a good deal of avant-garde art?"
"How should we like it were stars to burn / With a passion for us we could not return? / If equal affection cannot be, / Let the more loving one be me." (From The More Loving One)
"When you have been compelled by circumstances to be disturbed in a manner, quickly return to yourself and do not continue out of tune longer than the compulsion lasts; for you will have more mastery over the harmony by continually recurring to it." (From Meditations Of Marcus Aurelius)
"Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away."
"People who love what they do wear themselves down doing it; they even forget to wash or eat. Do you have less respect for your own nature than the engraver does for engraving, the dancer for dance, the miser for money or the social climber for status? When they're really possessed by what they do, they'd rather stop eating and sleeping than give up their arts."
"In my view, owning the market and holding it forever is the ultimate strategy for winners." (from "The Wisdom of Investment–The Folly of Speculation", December 5, 2001)
"Highly educated young people are tutored, taught, and monitored in all aspects of their lives, except the most important, which is character-building. But without character and courage, nothing else lasts." (From New York Times, November 2004)
"People are wonderful, people — I love individuals. I hate groups of people, a group of people with a common purpose; 'cause pretty soon they have little hats, you know? And armbands, and fight songs, and a list of people they're going to visit at 3 A.M.. So I dislike and despise groups of people but I love individuals: every person that you look at, you can see the universe in their eyes if you're really looking. And they're great." (From interview with Jon Stewart)
"I am prepared to meet my maker; whether my maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter." (from a letter to John Anderson, December 1942)
"The oldest subject in poetry is carpe diem. The reason you're asked to carpe your diems is that you don't have many diems left. The more you see your days as numbered, the more grateful you'll be for those moments you have."
"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common that unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "Press on" has solved, and always will solve, the problems of the human race."
"[Religions] are only temporarily successful attempts to cope with the lack of meaning in life; they are not permanent answers. At some moments in history, they have explained convincingly what was wrong with human existence and have given credible answers. From the fourth to the eighth century of our era Christianity spread throughout Europe, Islam arose in the Middle East, and Buddhism conquered Asia. For hundreds of years these religions provided satisfying goals for people to spend their lives pursuing. But today it is more difficult to accept their worldviews as definitive. The form in which religions have presented their truths--myths, revelations, holy texts--no longer compels belief in an era of scientific rationality, even though the substance of the truths may have remained unchanged. A vital new religion may one day rise again. In the meantime, those who seek consolation in existing churches often pay for their peace of mind with a tacit agreement to ignore a great deal of what is known about the way the world works." (from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, 14)
"And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it."
"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea."
"Mrs. Joe was a very clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of making her cleanliness more uncomfortable and unacceptable than the dirt itself. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and some people do the same by religion."
"If you want to be great, think beyond your lifetime."
"Somehow I can't believe there are any heights that can't be scaled by a man who knows the secret of making dreams come true. This special secret, it seems to me, can be summarized in four C's. They are Curiosity, Confidence, Courage, and Constancy — and the greatest of these is Confidence. When you believe a thing, believe it all the way, implicitly and unquestionably."
"Every person has his own ideas of the act of praying for God's guidance, tolerance, and mercy to fulfill his dueties and responsibilities. My own concept of prayer is not as a plea for special favors nor as a quick palliation for wrongs knowingly committed. A prayer, it seems to me, implies a promise as well as a request; at the highest level, prayer not only is a supplication for strength and guidance, but also becomes an affirmation of life and thus a reverent praise of God." (from his essay Deeds Rather Than Words, 1963)
"Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creatures of man. We are free agents, and man is more powerful than matter." (from Vivan Grey, Book VI, Chapter 7)
"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
"Kindness covers all of my political beliefs. No need to spell them out. I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn't always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out."
"Be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. In the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul." (from Desiderata)
"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."
"When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity."
"Home is where one starts from. As we grow older The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated Of dead and living. Not the intense moment Isolated, with no before and after, But a lifetime burning in every moment And not the lifetime of one man only But of old stones that cannot be deciphered...Love is most nearly itself When here and now cease to matter." (From The Four Quarters)
"The journey to truly superior performance is neither for the faint of heart nor for the impatient. The development of genuine expertise requires struggle, sacrifice, and honest, often painful self-assessment. There are no shortcuts." (From The Making of An Expert)
"Real expertise must pass three tests. First, it must lead to performance that is consistently superior to that of the expert's peers. Second, real expertise produces concrete results. ... Finally, true expertise can be replicated and measure in the lab. As the British scientist Lord Kelvin states, 'If you can not measure it, you can not improve it.'" (From The Making of An Expert)
"Men yearn for poetry though they may not confess it; they desire that joy shall be graceful and sorrow august and infinity have form..." (from A Passage to India)
"I'm certain that learning to read and learning to love reading owe a great deal (much more that we ever dreamed) to the nature of the human relationships that occur around and through books... If we could sneak into the homes of avid readers, I think we'd discover very often that the comfortable relationship between an older reader and a younger reader during the shared reading of a mutually loved book might be a key factor in the child's success." (From Radical Reflections)
"Knowledge is not the personal property of its discoverer, but the common property of all. As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously."
"The only reason people do not know much is because they do not care to know. They are incurious. Incuriousity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is" (from The Fry Chronicles).
"Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning." (from TIME, 1/13/1997)
"Remember, the final measure of your life won't be how well you live, but how well others live, because of you." (from 2007 commencement address at Saint George's School in Spokane)
"Sometimes, to give a variety to our amusements, the girls sung to the guitar; and while they thus formed a little concert, my wife and I would stroll down the sloping field, that was embellished with blue bells of centaury, talk of our children with rapture, and enjoy the breeze that wafted both health and harmony." (From The Vicar of Wakefield)
"To have known somebody all these years, and to have lived this life together, and to have weathered the brutalities of intimacy — it’s a daring thing … it’s an astonishing thing."
"Man truly achieves his full human condition when he produces without being compelled by the physical necessity of selling himself as a commodity."
"This is not matter of how many pounds of meat one might be able to eat, or how many times a year someone can go to the beach, or how many ornaments from abroad one might be able to buy with his current salary. What really matters is that the individual feels more complete, with much more internal richness and much more responsibility."
"Tribal psychology is so deeply pleasurable that, even when we don't have tribes, we go and make them, because it's fun. (Photo of shirtless Ohio State fans) Sports is to war as pornography is to sex... we get to exercise some ancient, ancient drives." (from TED "on the mechanics of moral roots, 3/2008)
"Salty and wind-swept, but warm and glittering. Keeping in step with the measure under the fixed stars of the task. How many personal failures are due to a lack of faith in this harmony between human beings, at once strict and gentle." (From Markings)
"Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if on the axis on which the world revolves, slowly, evenly, without rushing towards the future; live the actual moment. Only this moent is life."
"It's usually wise, when promulgating eternal laws, to be clear about what you mean." (from Vanity Fair - Christopher Hitchens' Ten Commandments)
"I might as well say it to anyone who might be watching: if you can hold it down on the smokes and the cocktails you might be well-advised to do so." (from an interview with Anderson Cooper)
"If there is a God who will damn his children forever, I would rather go to hell than to go to heaven and keep the society of such an infamous tyrant. I make my choice now. I despise that doctrine. It has covered the cheeks of this world with tears. It has polluted the hearts of children, and poisoned the imaginations of men. It has been a constant pain, a perpetual terror to every good man and woman and child. It has filled the good with horror and with fear; but it has had no effect upon the infamous and base. It has wrung the hearts of the tender, it has furrowed the cheeks of the good. This doctrine never should be preached again. What right have you, sir, Mr. clergyman, you, minister of the gospel to stand at the portals of the tomb, at the vestibule of eternity, and fill the future with horror and with fear? I do not believe this doctrine, neither do you. If you did, you could not sleep one moment. Any man who believes it, and has within his breast a decent, throbbing heart, will go insane. A man who believes that doctrine and does not go insane has the heart of a snake and the conscience of a hyena."
"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, which somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."
"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. ... Stay hungry. Stay foolish."
"Post-modern youth display a special personal and psychological openness, flexibility and unfinishedness. Although many of today’s youth have achieved a sense of inner identity, the term ‘identity’ suggests a fixity, stability and ‘closure’ that many of them are not willing to accept: with these young men and women, it is not always possible to speak of the ‘normal resolution’ of identity issues. . . . Our earlier fear of the ominous psychiatric implications of ‘prolonged adolescence’ must now be qualified by an awareness that in post-modern youth many adolescent concerns and qualities persist long past the time when (according to the standards in earlier eras) they should have ended. . . . The concepts of the personal future and the ‘life work’ are ever more hazily defined; the effort to change oneself, redefine oneself or reform oneself does not cease with the arrival of adulthood." (from Youth, Change, and Violence)
"The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware." (from On the Road)
"They danced down the street like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yello roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"" (from On the Road)
"There is something very wonderful about music. Words are wonderful enough; but music is even more wonderful. It speaks not to our thoughts as words do; it speaks through our hearts and spirits, to the very core and root of our souls. Music smoothes us, stirs us up, it puts noble feelings in us, it can make us cringe; and it can melt us to tears; yet we have no idea how. It is a language by itself, just as perfect in its ways as speech, as words, just as divine, as blessed."
"Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than the atoms in your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about the universe: You are all stardust. You couldn't be here if stars hadn't exploded, because the elements (the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, all the things that matter for evolution) weren't created at the beginning of time, they were created in stars. So forget Jesus. Stars died so you could live."
"I believe that drugs are basically of more use to the audience than to the artist. I think that the illusion of oneness with the universe, and absorption with the significance of every object in your environment, and the pervasive aura of peace and contentment is not the ideal state for an artist. It tranquilizes the creative personality, which thrives on conflict and on the clash and ferment of ideas. The artist's transcendence must be within his own work; he should not impose any artificial barriers between himself and the mainspring of his subconscious. One of the things that's turned me against LSD is that all the people I know who use it have a peculiar inability to distinguish between things that are really interesting and stimulating and things that appear so in the state of universal bliss the drug induces on a good trip. They seem to completely lose their critical faculties and disengage themselves from some of the most stimulating areas of life. Perhaps when everything is beautiful, nothing is beautiful."
"The true value of a man is not determined by his possession, supposed or real, of Truth, but rather by his sincere exertion to get to the Truth. It is not possession of the Truth, but rather the pursuit of Truth by which he extends his powers and in which his ever-growing perfectibility is to be found."
"Without language, one cannot hope to talk to people and understand them; one cannot share their hopes and aspirations, grasp their history, appreciate their history or savour their songs." (1995)
"Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it; and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic."
"No, we intentionally don't patent… Since our primary competitors are national governments, the enforceability of patents is questionable." (TED Talk Interview, 3/19/2013, on SpaceX's lack of patents)
"I think my drive to get [things] done is sort of disconnected from hope, enthusiasm, or anything else. I just — I actually just don't care about hope, or enthusiasm, motivation … I just give it everything I've got, irrespective of what circumstances may be. You just keep going, and get it done."
"The most spiritual men, as the strongest, find their happiness where others would find their destruction: in the labyrinth, in hardness against themselves and others, in experiments. Their joy is self-conquest. Difficult tasks are a privilege to them; to play with burdens that crush others, a recreation. They are the most venerable kind of man: that does not preclude their being the most cheerful and the kindliest."
"Only the most accute and active animals are capable of boredom. A great theme for a poet would be God's boredom on the seventh day of Creation."
"Maintaining a total-market portfolio with only efficient changes requires fortitude, patience, and humility. ... Wise investors cultivate these three virtues of fortitude, patience, and humility. For total-market investors, the three disciplines of history, arithmetic, and reason all say that they will succeed in the end." (from "Investing in Total Markets", January 9, 2002)
"It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique. It's not easy. But if you accept your misfortune, and handle it right, your perceived failure can become a catalyst for profound reinvention." (from 2011 Dartmouth College Commencement Address)
"The emotionally healthy person is not always, we must note, happy in a superficial sense. He may, in the highest sense, be a man of sorrows. Being aware of much, he takes the emotional impact of much. ... Thus the anxiously self-centered person may live in fear of sickness and death--but only his own, or that of someone on whom he depends. The emotionally healthy person loves life enough to feel as his own the common mortality of all living things ... The healthy person, in short, does not feel less pain and sorrow than his less sound fellow, but more. Also, however, he feels more joy, more quiet delight, more peace, more amazement, and more amusement. He is, quite simply, more alive: more engaged with experience. His security lies not in the avoidance of suffereing but in the fact that he can emotionally afford to feel it." (From The Mind Alive, 1954)
"To read as if your life depended on it would mean to let into your reading your beliefs, the swirl of your dreamlife, the physical sensations of your ordinary carnal life; and, simultaneously, to allow what you're reading to pierce the routines, safe and impermeable, in which ordinary carnal life is tracked, charted, channeled."
"Culture is a system of permissions. It's about the attitudes and behaviors that are acceptable and unacceptable in different communities, those that are approved of and those that are not. If you don't understand the cultural codes, you can look just awful. (148, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything)
"If you have an idea of what you want to do in your future, you must go at it with almost monastic obsession - be it music, the ballet, or just a basic degree. You have to go at it single-mindedly and let nothing get in your way. ... All the people you admire, from Mohammed Ali to any politician - they work, and work, and work. Some of the greatest thinkers, artists, architects, politicians, and other movers, shakers, and creators have come from very meager beginnings. If these people can do it, why not you? You've gotta keep picking yourself up and reaching for it, and that's the long and short of it."
"In a moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing to do, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”
"The one quality which sets one man apart from another—the key which lifts one to every aspiration while others are caught up in the mire of mediocrity—is not talent, formal education, nor intellectual brightness—it is self-discipline. With self-discipline, all things are possible. Without it, even the simplest goal can seem like the impossible dream."
"Strive for perfection in everything we do. Take the best that exists and make it better. When it does not exist, design it. Accept nothing nearly right or good enough." (Henry Royce slogan for the Rolls-Royce company, quoted in Transforming the Organization (1996) by Francis J. Gouillart, p. 85)
"To abstain from the enjoyment which is in our power, or to seek distant rather than immediate results, are among the most painful exertions of the human will" (as quoted by Daniel Goldstein in the TED talk "The battle between your present and future self". Given November 2011, New York.)
"People are always blaming circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstance. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them."
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
"People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it."
“…through all our lives we are faced with the task of reconciling opposites, which, in logical thought, cannot be reconciled… do it by bringing into the situation a force that belongs to a higher level where opposites are transcended – the power of love… Divergent problems, as it were, forces us to strain ourselves to a level above ourselves; they demand, and thus provoke the supply of forces from a higher level, thus bringing love, beauty, goodness and truth into our lives. It is only with the help of these higher forces that the opposites can be reconciled in the living situation.”
"Art matters fully as much as politics, the public must be told; for it is the politics of the spirit, while politics proper are the politics of the body. All that good government can give us is material well-being, the political and economic order and plenty enabling us to cultivate our minds and spirits." (from New York Magazine, June 24, 1968)
“I don’t think there’s much point in bemoaning the state of the world unless there’s some way you can think of to improve it. Otherwise, don’t bother writing a book; go and find a tropical island and lie in the sun."
"everything the soul endeavours or endures under the guidance of wisdom ends in happiness…” (From Meno, 88c)
"No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable."
"It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle" (from The Art of War)
"I loathe the expression 'What makes him tick.' It is the American mind, looking for simple and singular solution, that uses the foolish expression. A person not only ticks, he also chimes and strikes the hour, falls and breaks and has to be put together again, and sometimes stops like an electric clock in a thunderstorm."
"The first cup kisses away my thirst, and my loneliness is quelled by the second. The third gives insight worthy of ancient scrolls, and the fourth exiles my troubles. My body becomes lighter with the fifth, and the sixth sends word from immortals. But the seventh--oh, the seventh cup--if I drink you, a wind will hurry my wings toward the sacred island."
"There is nothing you can say in answer to a compliment. I have been compliment myself a great many times, and they always embarrass me—I always feel that they have not said enough."
"Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, and...Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do."
"I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up."
"Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it."
"When in doubt, tell the truth. It will confound your enemies and astound your friends."
"There are only two important days in your life: the day you are born, and the day you find out why."
"She was a fool, and so am I, and so is anyone who thinks he sees what God is doing" (from Cat's Cradle).
"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be" (from Mother Night).
"And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes." (from Slaughterhouse Five)
"I made up lies, so they all fit nice, and I made this sad world a paradise." (from A Man Without a Country)
"Procrastination is the fear of success. People procrastinate because they are afraid of the success that they know will result if they move ahead now. Because success is heavy, carries a responsibility with it, it is much easier to procrastinate and live on the 'someday I’ll' philosophy.”
"In my experience, there is one personal characteristic upon which all else turns - one that clarifies, simplifies, and focuses us... It is not intelligence, wit, charm, or even stubborn determination, since all these become negative when we're self-absorbed. The key personal characteristic is a consistent readiness to yield to the truth in all circumstances, no matter what the apparent cost." (From Bond that Make Us Free, 320)
"The True Gentleman is the man whose conduct proceeds from good will and an acute sense of propriety, and whose self-control is equal to all emergencies; who does not make the poor man conscious of his poverty, the obscure man of his obscurity, or any man of his inferiority or deformity; who is himself humbled if necessity compels him to humble another; who does not flatter wealth, cringe before power, or boast of his own possessions or achievements; who speaks with frankness but always with sincerity and sympathy; whose deed follows his word; who thinks of the rights and feelings of others, rather than his own; and who appears well in any company, a man with whom honor is sacred and virtue safe."
"I think faith is an extraordinary thing. I'd like to have some, but I don't, and that's just how that works." (From Q&A about Serenity)
"I believe that the only reality is how we treat each other - that morality comes from the absence of any grander scheme, not from the presence of any grander scheme." (From above Q&A, referring to AngelSeason 2 Episode 16, Epiphany)
"I am but too conscious of the fact that we are born in an age when only the dull are treated seriously, and I live in terror of not being misunderstood."
"Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly." (from The Picture of Dorian Gray)
"Women treat us just as humanity treats its gods. They worship us, and are always bothering us to do something for them." (from The Picture of Dorian Gray)
"Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals." (from The Picture of Dorian Gray)
"What I learned at a very early age was that I was responsible for my life. And as I became more spiritually conscious, I learned that we are all responsible for ourselves, that you create your own reality by the way you think and therefore act. You cannot blame apartheid, your parents, your circumstances, because you are not your circumstances. You are your possibilities. If you know that, you can do anything." (from O Magazine, January 2007, pg. 160)
"However devoutly a girl may worship the man of her choice, there always comes a time when she feels an irresistible urge to haul off and let him have it in the neck." (from Joy_in_the_Morning_(1946_novel))
"You know how it is with some girls. They seem to take the stuffing right out of you. I mean to say, there is something about their personality that paralyses the vocal chords and reduces the contents of the brain to cauliflower." (from Right_Ho,_Jeeves)
