Quotes
Lines I keep coming back to.
“Let the beauty you love be what you do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”
Rumi
“We have two lives, and the second begins when we realise we only have one.”
Confucius
“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
Mark Twain
“The moment that you feel that, just possibly, you’re walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself… that’s the moment you may be starting to get it right.”
Neil Gaiman
“You get paid for being right first, and to be first, you can’t wait for consensus.”
Naval Ravikant
“If you wait until you’re ready, you’ll be waiting the rest of your life.”
Naval Ravikant
“If you’re not failing, you’re not learning.”
Derek Sivers
“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”
Seneca
“Waste no more time arguing over what a good man should be. Be one.”
Marcus Aurelius
“Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.”
Richard Feynman
“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.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
“Just as a tree grows towards the heavens, so too do its roots stretch further into darkness.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“I wear the chain I forged in life. I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.”
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
Winston Churchill
“If you look for the darkness, that’s all you will ever see. But if you look for the light, often you will find it.”
Uncle Iroh
“How lucky I am to have had something which makes saying goodbye so hard.”
A. A. Milne
“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: ‘It might have been.’”
John Greenleaf Whittier
“To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time.”
Leonard Bernstein
“Friendship happens on the way to something else. If you aim to learn or achieve something with others, friendship happens naturally during the shared pursuit.”
James Clear
“Praise specifically, criticize generally.”
Warren Buffett
“You’re under no obligation to be the same person you were five minutes ago.”
Alan Watts
“Sucking at something is the first step to being good at something.”
Jake the Dog, Adventure Time
“The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”
Werner Heisenberg
“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
Neil Gaiman
“To be in a perpetual state of wonder is the great antidote to existential malaise.”
Jason Silva
“There isn’t time, so brief is life, for bickerings, apologies, heartburnings, callings to account. There is only time for loving, and but an instant, so to speak, for that.”
Mark Twain
“Many people wish they started sooner. Almost nobody wishes they started later.”
“A small act is worth a million thoughts.”
“Be present above all else. Desire is suffering.”
Buddha
“If you can’t see yourself working with someone for life, don’t work with them for a day.”
Naval Ravikant
“Reading is the ultimate meta-skill and can be traded for anything else.”
Naval Ravikant
“All the real benefits in life come from compound interest.”
Naval Ravikant
“Earn with your mind, not your time.”
Naval Ravikant
“Total honesty at all times. It’s almost always possible to be honest and positive.”
Naval Ravikant
“Free education is abundant, all over the Internet. It’s the desire to learn that’s scarce.”
Naval Ravikant
“If I always did only what I was qualified to do, I’d be pushing a broom somewhere.”
Naval Ravikant
“Being busy is a form of laziness — lazy thinking and indiscriminate action. Being busy is most often used as a guise for avoiding the few critically important but uncomfortable actions.”
Tim Ferriss
“Failure is most useful when you give your best effort. If you fail with a lackluster effort, you haven’t learned much. Perhaps you could have succeeded with a proper focus. But if your best effort fails, you have learned something valuable: this way doesn’t work.”
Derek Sivers
“Nobody is rooting for you to fail. You may succeed. You may fail. But, for the most part, nobody cares one way or the other. This is good. The world is big and you are small, which means you can chase your dreams with little worry for what people think.”
Derek Sivers
“Perfection and power are overrated. I think you were very wise to choose happiness and love.”
Uncle Iroh
“Stories you read when you’re the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you’ll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit.”
Neil Gaiman
“We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita: ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.”
J. Robert Oppenheimer
“It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.”
Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
“He is born in vain who, having attained the human birth, so difficult to get, does not attempt to realise God in this very life.”
Sri Ramakrishna
“What is success? It is an inner and indescribable force, resourcefulness, power of vision; a consciousness that I am, by my mere existence, exerting pressure on the movement of life about me. It is my belief in the adaptability of life to my own ends. Fortune and success lie within ourselves. We must hold them firmly — deep within us.”
Thomas Mann
“If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.”
Blaise Pascal
“I never let school get in the way of my education.”
Mark Twain
“Human beings are naturally meant to persevere. No matter what happens, as long as you don’t make the decision to give up, it does get better if you believe it will.”
Hungrybox
“You can’t think your way out of bad thinking; you have to act your way into better thinking.”
overheard on a Dr K podcast
“Death ain’t easy, but it can be poignant and gorgeous.”
After Life
“Categorise information according to projects.”
Tiago Forte
“Find a partner who is ready to build with you. It is not about finding perfection in another person; it is about realizing when you come across an undeniable connection that nourishes your being and matches the type of support you are looking for. When two people embrace their imperfections and commit to growing into better versions of themselves, it will naturally enhance the happiness they share.”
“Over the years, I’ve learned that the first idea you have is irrelevant. It’s just a catalyst for you to get started. Then you figure out what’s wrong with it, and you go through phases of denial, panic, regret. And then you finally have a better idea — and the second idea is always the important one.”
“When you can write well, you can think well.”
“Everyone is interesting. If you’re ever bored in a conversation, the problem’s with you, not the other person.”
“Love is given, not received.”
“How did I build this empire? With every damn brick.”
“You can never be lonely with the company of a good book.”
“It’s not what you see, it’s who you see it with.”
“Things that keep talented people from fulfilling their potential: trying to please everyone, imitating the desires of others, chasing status without questioning why, playing superhero and trying to do it all alone, dividing your attention between too many projects.”
“The teacher learns more than the student. The author learns more than the reader. The speaker learns more than the attendee. The way to learn is by doing.”
James Clear
“Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.”
Teller
“There are no lightbulb moments. There are, however, earned secrets.”
Duncan Anderson
“Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.”
Albert Einstein
“The most important thing when you pick a job out of school is that your learning per unit time is going to be very high.”
“The day will never arrive when you finally have everything under control. Learn to embrace the chaos. Being unable to escape from the problems of finitude is not, in itself, a problem. The human disease is often painful, but it’s only unbearable for as long as you’re under the impression that there might be a cure. Accept the inevitability of the affliction, and freedom ensues: you can get on with living at last.”
Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks
“We are slowed down sound and light waves, a walking bundle of frequencies tuned into the cosmos. We are souls dressed up in sacred biochemical garments and our bodies are the instruments through which our souls play their music.”
“Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain.
Pink Floyd, “Time”
You are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find, ten years has got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.”
“Almost invariably, growth and development has what’s called a critical period. There’s a particular period of maturation in which, with external stimulation of the appropriate kind, the capacity will pretty suddenly develop and mature. Before that and later than that, it’s either harder or impossible.”
Noam Chomsky
“Meditation, and mindfulness in particular — being present to what we are doing in a given moment — is one of the essential keys to happiness and improved mood, even if what we are doing is unpleasant.”
Andrew Huberman
“Life favours the specific ask and punishes the vague wish.”
Tim Ferriss
“The purpose of going into business is to get free of a job so you can create jobs for other people.”
Michael Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited
“There’s no shame in failing. There’s only shame in not trying.”
Dr K
“The more I give, the more rich I feel.”
Ronni Kahn, founder of OzHarvest
“You either unconsciously emulate your parents or you make a conscious decision to act differently.”
John, Airtree
“The best way to improve your kids is to improve yourself.”
The Knowledge Project
“You don’t learn then start, you start then learn.”
Sahil Lavingia, The Minimalist Entrepreneur
“You either prioritise your time or someone else will.”
“Do not pray for an easy life; pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.”
Bruce Lee
“Life is not about money, but it is about having the freedom to do what you want and spend your time how you want — with family, friends and loved ones. Without money, you can’t do that. Life is not free.”
“Are you ever ready? No. But that’s what makes it a growth experience.”
Mended Light
“Time doesn’t heal all wounds; meaning heals all wounds.”
Logan Ury
“The more disciplined you are, the more money you can make.”
Sam Ovens
“The secret weapon to efficiency and productivity and getting things done is isolating yourself from the world with only the work for long periods of time.”
Sam Ovens
“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forward.”
Søren Kierkegaard
“Happiness — a butterfly, which when pursued, seems always just beyond your grasp; but if you sit down quietly, may alight upon you.”
“Something to everybody is nothing to no one.”
Codie Sanchez
“The best way to do something ‘lean’ is to gather a tight group of people, give them very little money, and very little time.”
Bob Klein, chief engineer of the F-14 program
“Crime does not pay as much as code.”
Freddy Vega
“What every scientist knows, but few will admit, is that the requirement for great success is great ambition. Moreover, the ambition is for personal triumph over other men, not merely over nature.”
Richard Lewontin
“We are the masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.”
Winston Churchill
“A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: a complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work.”
John Gall
“Focusing is about saying no.”
Steve Jobs
“For all practical purposes, there is no limit to the number of startups. Startups make wealth, which means they make things people want, and if there’s a limit on the number of things people want, we are nowhere near it. I still don’t even have a flying car.”
Paul Graham
“Startups are merely an ulterior motive for curiosity.”
Paul Graham
“Salary is for living, equity is for upside.”
Michael Seibel
“Choose the right therapy for yourself.”
Michael Seibel
“Everyone has an invisible sign hanging around their neck saying: ‘Make me feel important.’”
Mary Kay Ash
“Winning feels good.”
Michael Seibel & Dalton Caldwell, on passion
“I’m addicted to taking dubs.”
Marcus, after beating Riley at Smash in Korea
“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.”
W. H. Murray, mountaineer
“Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.”
US Navy SEALs saying
“Boring is what makes you rich.”
Alex Hormozi
“I won’t do my best, I’ll do what’s required.”
Alex Hormozi
“Life is too short for bad products.”
Inspired
“Ultimate simplicity leads to purity.”
Jiro Dreams of Sushi
“Do not excuse little evils, thinking that they will not have their reckoning. Drop by drop, the water pot is filled. Little by little, a man casts his damnation.”
Dhammapada (法句经)
“Do not neglect little goods, thinking they will bring no profit. Drop by drop, the water pot is filled. Little by little, a man finds his blessings.”
Dhammapada (法句经)
“Scrum is to Agile what hotdogs are to steaks.”
ThePrimeagen
“The best school for kids is the one closest to the home.”
Scott Galloway
“This too shall pass.”
Marcus, Japanese onsen, Tokyo, September 5th
“One conversation can change your life.”
“We will rebuild.”
Rehbock family motto
“You can’t meditate on an empty stomach.”
Dr K, on monks having the easiest lives
“In order for the king to gain respect and earn his authority, he must first have the integrity to carry out his own principles in the life that he has created.”
Erin Byrd, Jungian psychologist
“What point is there in suffering except to let it turn you into someone who deeply cares for others and is intensely grateful for being alive?”
Steve Biddulph, Fully Human
“You don’t really want independence, you want interdependence.”
David Brooks, The Second Mountain
“We have all known the long loneliness, and we have learned that the only solution is love, and that love comes with community.”
Dorothy Day
“I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least.”
Dorothy Day
“The final object of this love and gratitude was God. No human creature could receive or contain so vast a flood of love and joy as I often felt after the birth of my child.”
Dorothy Day
“Good timber does not grow with ease:
Douglas Malloch
The stronger wind, the stronger trees;
The further sky, the greater length;
The more the storm, the more the strength.
By sun and cold, by rain and snow,
In trees and men good timbers grow.”
“A life of ease is not the pathway to growth and happiness. On the contrary, a life of ease is how you get stuck and confused in life.”
Benjamin Hardy
“Suffering that is not transformed is transmitted.”
“Good fiction tells us what we know, but don’t quite know that we know.”
“God is love, God is truth, God is presence.”
“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”
Søren Kierkegaard
“The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss — an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife — is sure to be noticed.”
Søren Kierkegaard
“What labels me, negates me.”
Søren Kierkegaard
“A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that’s just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it’s a joke.”
Søren Kierkegaard
“Love is the expression of the one who loves, not of the one who is loved. Those who think they can love only the people they prefer do not love at all. Love discovers truths about individuals that others cannot see.”
Søren Kierkegaard
“Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.”
Søren Kierkegaard
“To cheat oneself out of love is the most terrible deception; it is an eternal loss for which there is no reparation, either in time or in eternity.”
Søren Kierkegaard
“Gratitude is a soil in which egotism cannot grow.”
David Brooks
“Building something — building anything — builds community.”
“The more you complain, the worse your model of reality.”
Chris Williamson
“Unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments.”
Neil Strauss
“The world is much more verb than noun.”
Leigh Brasington
“The jhanas are just neurotransmitters.”
Leigh Brasington
“What do you fear losing if you cannot own anything?”
“What are you afraid of losing when nothing in the world belongs to you?”
“If you do not see humour in the serious, and the serious in humour, you have understood neither.”
my Dad
“Do not stand at my grave and weep;
Mary Elizabeth Frye
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.”
“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”
Lao Tzu
“First do no harm, but first do something.”
Cliffe, Updoc
“Memento mori, memento amoris.”
“Any belonging that asks us to betray ourselves is not true belonging. We have to belong to ourselves as much as we need to belong to others.”
Brené Brown
“Marriage is the triumph of love over intelligence; second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.”
attributed to Oscar Wilde
“To be a sailor of the world, bound for all ports.”
Walt Whitman
“Fear only exists in the vague — therefore distil, clarify, solidify.”
“You have more agency than you know. Your dream life is always just one action away; living a life in accordance with your values is always one pivot away.”
“Diversification is how you preserve wealth; concentration is how you build wealth.”
Warren Buffett
“Embarrassment is an under-explored emotion.”
“If you want to improve your children, first improve yourself, then spend time with them.”
“Make mistakes of ambition, not mistakes of sloth.”
Niccolò Machiavelli
“Happy is the horse that bears the weight.”
“I sat with anger long enough to know her name was grief.”
attributed to C.S. Lewis