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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| af426a1 | That boy is a perfect cyclops, isn't he?" said Amy one day, as Laurie clattered by on horseback, with a flourish of his whip as he passed." | Louisa May Alcott | ||
| 7c28f00 | I want to do something splendid... | Louisa May Alcott | ||
| 5d0f7fd | If Earth's children ever forget who provides for them, we may wake up someday and find we don't have a home. | Jean M. Auel | ||
| 91677b8 | In a world so empty of human life, there was comfort in the thought that an invisible realm of spirits was aware of their existence, cared about their actions, and perhaps directed their steps. Even a stern or inimical spirit who cared enough to demand certain actions of appeasement was better than the heartless disregard of a harsh and indifferent world, in which their lives were entirely in their own hands, with no one else to turn to in .. | Jean M. Auel | ||
| ebf25a1 | As Creb looked at the peaceful, trusting face of the strange girl in his lap, he felt a deep love flowering in his soul for her. He couldn't have loved her more if she were his own. | Jean M. Auel | ||
| 1b65064 | No one told her it was impossible to rapid-fire two stones from a sling, because it had never been done before, and since no one told her she couldn't, she taught herself to do it. | Jean M. Auel | ||
| 4797e82 | Jo carried her love of liberty and hate of conventionalities to such and unlimited extent that she naturally found herself worsted in an argument. | Louisa May Alcott | ||
| b0baf9d | Resistance is implacable, intractable, indefatigable. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| 60e4add | Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance. | resistance | Steven Pressfield | |
| 2ccc199 | Rooster was a bad slave. He had no use for anyone, not even the gods. Not that he was angry at the gods, like some I'd met. He just dismissed them entirely. There were no gods, and that was that. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| ea1e6dd | Is it healthy for a society to entrust its defense to one percent of its population, while the other 99 percent thanks its lucky stars that it doesn't have to do the dirty work? | Steven Pressfield | ||
| 094fd28 | Any support we get from persons of flesh and blood is like Monopoly money; it's not legal tender in that sphere where we have to do our work. In fact, the more energy we spend stoking up on support from colleagues and loved ones, the weaker we become and the less capable of handling our business. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| 316a1fa | What we get when we turn pro is, we find our power. We find our will and our voice and we find our self-respect. We become who we always were but had, until then, been afraid to embrace and to live out. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| ccffef7 | The professional cannot allow the actions of others to define his reality. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| dd8a66b | Similarly the call to growth can be conceptualized as personal (a daimon or genius, an angel or a muse) or as impersonal, like the tides or the transiting of Venus. Either way works, as long as we're comfortable with it. Or if extra-dimensionality doesn't sit well with you in any form, think of it as "talent," programmed into our genes by evolution. The point, for the thesis I'm seeking to put forward, is that there are forces we can call o.. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| 9e4ae63 | Then there's the third way proffered by the Lord of Discipline, which is beyond both hierarchy and territory. That is to do the work and give it to Him. Do it as an offering to God. Give the act to me. Purged of hope and ego, | Steven Pressfield | ||
| 48e2aef | Doctors estimate that seventy to eighty percent of their business is non-health-related. People aren't sick, they're self-dramatizing. Sometimes the hardest part of a medical job is keeping a straight face. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| 03bb0cb | The clash is epic and internal, between the ego and the Self, and the stakes are our lives. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| bfd0beb | The children who were able to sit for three minutes with a marshmallow on the table in front of them without eating it were rewarded with two marshmallows when the experimenter returned. But that's as crazy as inbox-watching. Krishna said we have the right to our labor, but not to the fruits of our labor. He meant that the piano is its own reward, as is the canvas, the barre, and the movieola. Fuck the marshmallows. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| 78d4692 | instill courage not by his words alone but by the calm and professional manner with which he spoke them. War is work, not mystery. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| de02c6c | Sometimes on Wednesday I'll read something that I wrote on Tuesday and I'll think, "This is crap. I hate it and I hate myself." Then I'll re-read the identical passage on Thursday. To my astonishment, it has become brilliant overnight. Ignore false negatives. Ignore false positives. Both are Resistance. Keep working." | Steven Pressfield | ||
| 0af1020 | Warrior cultures (and warrior leaders) enlist shame, not only as a counter to fear but as a goad to honor. The warrior advancing into battle (or simply resolving to keep up the fight) is more afraid of disgrace in the eyes of his brothers than he is of the spears and lances of the enemy. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| 0a85f8a | The sword master stepping onto the fighting floor knows he will be facing powerful opponents. Not the physical adversaries whom he will fight (though those indeed serve as stand-ins for the enemy). The real enemy is inside himself. The monk in meditation knows this. So does the yogi. So do the film editor and the video-game creator and the software writer. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| 74c0819 | The Gnostics believed that exile was the essential condition of man. Do you agree? I do. The artist and the addict both wrestle with this experience of exile. They share an acute, even excruciating sensitivity to the state of separation and isolation, and both actively seek a way to overcome it, to transcend it, or at least to make the pain go away. What is the pain of being human? It's the condition of being suspended between two worlds an.. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| bbd3ca9 | This is what I feared for Michael. That his generation, so strong, so well made, so bright and aware beyond its years, would compare itself to us in envy, envy of the clarity of our challenges and the brutish obviousness of our enemies. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| ef207e7 | Sjecas li se,Dijanece,kad smo se borili s Tebancima kod Eritreje?Kad su se slomili i pobjegli?Bio je to prvi bijeg kojem sam svjedocio.Zaprepastio me je.Postoji li primitivniji i vise ponizavajuci prizor pod suncem nego kad se falanga slama zbog straha?Zbog njega se covjek srami sto je smrtnik,kad ugleda tkavu neplemenitost cak i kod neprijatelja.To krsi sve bozje zakone.Samoubojicino lice koje se pretvorilo u grimasu prijezira sada se razv.. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| dbf70ea | You think Resistance isn't real? Resistance will bury you. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| 8945af7 | In short, if the Muse exists, she does not whisper to the untalented. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| 96b901a | THE MAGIC OF MAKING A START 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. All sorts of things occur to help one that would not otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meet.. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| 6d39a36 | There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| 9cdb2c1 | The Bhagavad-Gita tells us we have a right only to our labor, not to the fruits of our labor. All the warrior can give is his life; all the athlete can do is leave everything on the field. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| f0ad84d | Resistance is directly proportional to love. If you're feeling massive Resistance, the good news is, it means there's tremendous love there too. If you didn't love the project that is terrifying you, you wouldn't feel anything. The opposite of love isn't hate; it's indifference. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| f70f759 | The artist and the fundamentalist arise from societies at differing stages of development. The artist is the advanced model. His culture possesses affluence, stability, enough excess of resource to permit the luxury of self-examination. The artist is grounded in freedom. He is not afraid of it. He is lucky. He was born in the right place. He has a core of self- confidence, of hope for the future. He believes in progress and evolution. His f.. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| 2f41349 | If the upper realm is, as Plato suggested, the sphere of perfect love, truth, justice, and beauty, then the artist seeks to call down the magic of this world and to create, by dint of labor and luck, the closest-to-sublime simulacra of those qualities that he or she can. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| 3f3254b | A warrior culture trains for adversity. Luxury and ease are the goals advertised to the civilian world. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| 2bbd7c7 | PROFESSIONAL DEDICATES HIMSELF TO MASTERING TECHNIQUE The professional respects his craft. He does not consider himself superior to it. He recognizes the contributions of those who have gone before him. He apprentices himself to them. The professional dedicates himself to mastering technique not because he believes technique is a substitute for inspiration but because he wants to be in possession of the full arsenal of skills when inspirati.. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| be36c12 | Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance. Therefore the more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul. That's why we feel so much Resistance. If it meant nothing to us, there'd be no Resistance. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| 8080a0f | You're supposed to learn that things that you think are nothing, as weightless as air, are actually powerful substantial forces, as real and as solid as earth. I understood. The eagle was telling me that dreams, visions, meditations such as this very one-things that I had till now disdained as fantasy and illusion-were as real and as solid as anything in my waking life. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| 79fafa6 | What does Resistance feel like? First, unhappiness. We feel like hell. A low-grade misery pervades everything. We're bored, we're restless. We can't get no satisfaction. There's guilt but we can't put our finger on the source. We want to go back to bed; we want to get up and party. We feel unloved and unlovable. We're disgusted. We hate our lives. We hate ourselves. Unalleviated, Resistance mounts to a pitch that becomes unendurable. At thi.. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| 710954e | A child has no trouble believing the unbelievable, nor does the genius or the madman. It's only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and overthink and hesitate. Don't think. Act. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| 23712d6 | performing the commonplace under uncommonplace conditions. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| 76a2134 | The Spartan king Agesilaus was still fighting in armor when he was eighty-two. Picasso was painting past ninety, and Henry Miller was chasing women (I'm sure Picasso was too) at eighty-nine. Once we turn pro, we're like sharks who have tasted blood, or renunciants who have glimpsed the face of God. For us, there is no finish line. No bell ends the bout. Life is the pursuit. Life is the hunt. When our hearts burst... then we'll go out, and n.. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| e076a96 | Be brave, my heart [wrote the poet and mercenary Archilochus]. Plant your feet and square your shoulders to the enemy. Meet him among the man-killing spears. Hold your ground. In victory, do not brag; in defeat, do not weep. The ancients resisted innovation in warfare because they feared it would rob the struggle of honor. King Agis was shown a new catapult, which could shoot a killing dart 200 yards. When he saw this, he wept. "Alas," he s.. | Steven Pressfield | ||
| 9b9a6d5 | How many of us have become drunks and drug addicts, developed tumors and neuroses, succumbed to painkillers, gossip, and compulsive cell-phone use, simply because we don't do that thing that our hearts, our inner genius, is calling us to? | Steven Pressfield |