“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.” – James Clear
“Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives.” — Henry David Thoreau, Life Without Principle
“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way that I know to avoid the trap of thinking that you have something to lose. You are already naked.” – Steve Jobs
“The man who has many answers
is often found
in the theaters of information
where he offers, graciously
his deep findings.
While the man who has only questions,
to comfort himself, makes music.
– Mary Oliver, The Man Who Has Many Answers
“Think of the life you have lived until now as over and, as a dead man, see what’s left as a bonus and live it according to Nature. Love the hand that fate deals you and play it as your own, for what could be more fitting?” – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“Few things are stronger than
The mind’s need for diverse
Experience.”
– Hafiz, The Mule Got Drunk And Lost In Heaven
“I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and the future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe the line.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden
“What we know, at least for starters, is: here we – so incontrovertibly – are. This is our life, these are our lighted seasons, and then we die. In the meantime, in between time, we can see.” – Annie Dillard, Pilgrim At Tinker Creek
“A creative life is an amplified life. It’s a bigger life, a happier life, an expanded life, and a hell of a lot more interesting life. Living in this manner – continually and stubbornly bringing forth the jewels that are hidden within you – is a fine art, in and of itself.” – Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic
“I have learned this for certain: if discontent is your disease, travel is medicine.” – Jedidiah Jenkins, To Shake the Sleeping Self
“A big heart is both a clunky and a delicate thing; it doesn’t protect itself and it doesn’t hide. – Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
“These, my voice announcing – I will sleep no more but arise,
You oceans that have been calm within me! how I feel you,
fathomless, stirring, preparing unprecedented waves and storms.”
– Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, “Starting from Paumanok”
“People don’t live, most of you, you don’t live, you’re just keeping the body alive. That’s not life.” – Anthony De Mello, Awareness
“Don’t explain your philosophy. Embody it.” – Epictetus
“All I insist on, and nothing else, is that you should show the whole world that you are not afraid. Be silent, if you choose; but when it is necessary, speak—and speak in such a way that people will remember it.” — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
“Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
— Mary Oliver, The Summer Day