Master Quotes Flashcards
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…the goal is not to change our activities but to change our state of mind as we carry out those activities. In particular, they don’t want us to stop thinking about or planning for tomorrow; instead they want us, as we think about and plan for tomorrow, to remember to appreciate today.
A Guide to the Good Life, William Braxton Irvine
..the more pleasures a man captures, the more masters will he have to serve.
A Guide to the Good Life, William Braxton Irvine
…it’s always been private occasions that make me feel connected to the joys and sorrows of the world, often in the form of communication with writers and musicians I’ll never meet in person
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, Susan Cain
Your heart is a compass, and it is your greatest gift. If you’re ever lost, you just open it up, and it will always steer you in the right direction.
Into the Magic Shop, James Doty
I had been chasing the wrong thing, and a heart ignored for too long will always make itself heard.
Into the Magic Shop, James Doty
How can you ever be prepared to die? “Do what the Buddhists do. Every day, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, ‘Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person I want to be?’”
Tuesday’s with Morrie, Mitch Albom
…if you’re trying to show off for people at the top, forget it. They will look down at you anyhow. And if you’re trying to show off for people at the bottom, forget it. They will only envy you. Status will get you nowhere. Only an open heart will allow you to float equally between everyone.
Tuesday’s with Morrie, Mitch Albom
Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to “die before you die” — and find that there is no death
The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle
“Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so”
Shakespeare Conversationally Speaking, Alan Garner
Yes, keep on degrading yourself, soul. But soon your chance at dignity will be gone. Everyone gets one life. Yours is almost used up, and instead of treating yourself with respect, you have entrusted your own happiness to the souls of others.
Meditations, Marcus Aurelius, Emperor of Rome
Think of your beliefs as houseguests that are welcome to stick around for a while but might wear out their welcome.
Andy Norman - Philosopher, JRE Podcast
The precise person you are now is fleeting, just like all the other people you’ve been.
Range, David Epstein
…the only trick of friendship, I think, is to find people who are better than you are—not smarter, not cooler, but kinder, and more generous, and more forgiving—and then to appreciate them for what they can teach you, and try to listen to them when they tell you something about yourself, no matter how bad—or good—it might be, and to trust them, which is the hardest thing of all.
A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara
You have a nature. You can play the tyrant to it, but you will certainly rebel. How hard can you force yourself to work to sustain your desire to work? How much can you sacrifice to your partner before generosity turns to resentment? What is it that you actually love? What is it that you genuinely want? Before you can articulate your own standards or value, you must see yourself as a stranger — and then you just get to know yourself. What do you find valuable or pleasurable? How much leisure, enjoyment, and reward do you require, so that you feel like more than a beast of burden? How must you treat yourself, so you won’t kick over the traces and smash up your corral? You could force yourself through your daily grind and kick your dog in frustration when you come home. You could watch the precious days tick by. Or you could learn how to entice yourself into sustainable, productive activity. Do you ask yourself what you want? Do you negotiate fairly with yourself? Or are you a tyrant, with yourself as slave?
12 Rules For Life: An Antidote to Chaos, Jordan Peterson
“Did what I want happen? No. Then my aim or my methods were wrong. I still have something to learn.” That is the voice of authenticity.
12 Rules For Life: An Antidote to Chaos, Jordan Peterson
For her, religion was a quiet thing. Her faith was all her own. God was her confidant, her hope. In his eyes, she was her true self, nothing more, nothing less. She was the person George would never see.
All Things Cease to Appear, Elizabeth Brundage
Tomas did not realize at the time that metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
Tomas came to this conclusion: Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman).
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious. They are the questions with no answers. A question with no answer is a barrier that cannot be breached. In other words, it is questions with no answers that set the limits of human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human existence
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
I have said before that metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
“To fear death, gentleman, is nothing other than to think oneself wise when one is not; for it is to think one knows what one does not know. No man knows whether death may not even turn out to be the greatest of blessings for a human being; and yet people fear it as if they knew for certain that it is the greatest of evils.”
Socrates Why People Believe Weird Things, Michael Shermer
The line between self-deception and willpower is often blurred…
Where Reasons End, Yiyun Li
Sometimes it’s hard to explain why some men suddenly do the things they do…But we are always optimists when it comes to time; we think there will be time to do things with other people. And time to say things to them.
A Man Called Ove, Fredrik Backman
…better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.
The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
“Remember, Amir agha. There’s no monster, just a beautiful day.”
The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
He belongs to time, and by the horror that seizes him, he recognizes his worst enemy. Tomorrow, he was longing for tomorrow, whereas everything in him ought to reject it. That revolt of the flesh is the absurd.
The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus
“It’s always a marvel when one’s pain doesn’t settle into bitterness, but brings forth kindness instead.”
The Book of Longings, Sue Monk Kidd
No assurance, no platitude, no promise of God’s mercy. Just a stark reminder that death was part of life. She offered me nothing but a way to accept whatever came—Let life be life.
The Book of Longings, Sue Monk Kidd
I’ve always been afraid of dying. I don’t know why I thought this would jinx it from actually happening.
They Both Die at the End, Adam Silvera
In bed, I thought. I thought those thoughts all men think when a woman tells them she’s pregnant: what would the baby look like? Would I like it? Would I love it? And then, more crushingly: fatherhood. With all its responsibilities and fulfillments and tedium and possibilities for failure.
A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara
She knew she should be experiencing pity and despair for her feline friend–and she was–but she had to acknowledge something else. As she stared at Voltaire’s still and peaceful expression–that total a sense of pain–there was an inescapable feeling brewing in the darkness. Envy.
The Midnight Library, Matt Haig
She had thought, in her nocturnal and suicidal hours, that solitude was the problem. But that was because it hadn’t been true solitude. The lonely mind in the busy city yearns for connection because it thinks human-to-human connection is the point of everything. But amid pure nature (or the ‘tonic of wildness’ as Thoreau called it) solitude took on a different character. It became in itself a kind of connection. A connection between herself and the world. And between her and herself.
The Midnight Library, Matt Haig
Maybe that’s what all lives were, though. Maybe even the most seemingly perfectly intense or worthwhile lives ultimately felt the same. Acres of disappointment and monotony and hurts and rivalries but with flashes of wonder and beauty.
The Midnight Library, Matt Haig
She realized that you could be as honest as possible in life, but people only see the truth if it is close enough to their reality. As Thoreau wrote, ‘It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.’
The Midnight Library, Matt Haig
It was interesting, she mused to herself, how life sometimes simply gave you a whole new perspective by waiting around long enough for you to see it.
The Midnight Library, Matt Haig
Here is what I learned: trying too hard makes it harder to get the results you want. Here is what I realized: behind almost every failure of my whole life I had made the same error. When I’d failed, it was rarely because I hadn’t tried enough, it was because I’d been trying too hard.
Effortless, Greg McKeown
If there are processes in your life that seem to involve an inordinate number of steps, try starting from zero. Then see if you can find your way back to those same results, only take fewer steps.
Effortless, Greg McKeown
…most geniuses prosper not by deconstructing intricate complexities but by exploiting unrecognizable simplicities.
Effortless, Greg McKeown
So if you are feeling overwhelmed by an essential project because you think you have to produce something flawless from the outset, simply lower the bar to start. Whether it’s writing a book, composing a song, painting a canvas, or any other creative pursuit that calls to you, inspiration flows from the courage to start with rubbish.
Effortless, Greg McKeown
Holding back when you still have steam in you might seem like a counterintuitive approach to getting important things done, but in fact, this kind of restraint is key to breakthrough productivity.
Effortless, Greg McKeown
Whatever has happened to you in life. Whatever hardship. Whatever pain. However significant those things are. They pale in comparison to the power you have to choose what to do now.
Effortless, Greg McKeown
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. –Robert Frost
You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.
You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. –Wayne Gretzky
Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.
Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. –John Lennon
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do, so throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, Dream, Discover.
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do, so throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, Dream, Discover. –Mark Twain
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. –Chinese Proverb
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. –Pablo Picasso
You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.
You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore. –Christopher Columbus
I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. –Maya Angelou
The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.
The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. –Mark Twain
There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.
There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing. –Aristotle
When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say, I used everything you gave me.
When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say, I used everything you gave me. –Erma Bombeck
When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.
When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life. –John Lennon
Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.
Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. –Maya Angelou
A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty.
A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty. –Unknown
If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them, and half as much money.
If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them, and half as much money. –Abigail Van Buren
Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck. –Dalai Lama
When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.
When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it. –Henry Ford
Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.
Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value. –Albert Einstein
If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving, you don’t actually live longer; it just seems longer.
Clement Freud
I cannot fiddle, but I can make a small town into a great state
Themistocles 514
Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts
Soren kierkeguard
Love is all, it gives all and it takes all
Soren Kierkegaard
Be that self which one truly is
Soren Kierkegaard
Don’t forget to live yourself
Soren Kierkegaard
Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are
Soren Kierkegaard
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use
Soren Kierkegaard
The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins
Soren Kierkegaard
Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced
Soren Kierkegaard
Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards
Soren Kierkegaard
