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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| cb99750 | It's a common attitude that transcends generations and societies. The angry, unappreciated genius is forced to do stuff she doesn't like, for people she doesn't respect, as she makes her way in the world. | Ryan Holiday | ||
| b3d851f | There's one fabulous way to work all that out of your system: attach yourself to people and organizations who are already successful and subsume your identity into theirs and move both forward simultaneously. It's certainly more glamorous to pursue your own glory--though hardly as effective. Obeisance is the way forward. | Ryan Holiday | ||
| 7265af7 | It means you're the least important person in the room--until you change that with results. | Ryan Holiday | ||
| a23e749 | The unrestricted person, who has in hand what they will in all events, is free. But anyone who can be restricted, coerced, or pushed into something against what they will is a slave." --EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 4.1.128b-129a" | Ryan Holiday | ||
| 50b4a36 | On tough days we might say, "My work is overwhelming," or "My boss is really frustrating." If only we could understand that this is impossible. Someone can't frustrate you, work can't overwhelm you--these are external objects, and they have no access to your mind. Those emotions you feel, as real as they are, come from the inside, not the outside. The Stoics use the word hypolepsis, which means "taking up"--of perceptions, thoughts, and jud.. | Ryan Holiday | ||
| 65c213d | 4.3.1 | Ryan Holiday | ||
| 7fbdd3c | The only real failure is abandoning your principles. Killing what you love because you can't bear to part from it is selfish and stupid. If your reputation can't absorb a few blows, it wasn't worth anything in the first place. | failure reputation | Ryan Holiday | |
| 42253f2 | How much more tolerant and understanding would you be today if you could see the actions of other people as attempts to do the right thing? | Ryan Holiday | ||
| a3d0899 | Whenever someone has done wrong by you, immediately consider what notion of good or evil they had in doing it. For when you see that, you'll feel compassion, instead of astonishment or rage. For you may yourself have the same notions of good and evil, or similar ones, in which case you'll make an allowance for what they've done. But if you no longer hold the same notions, you'll be more readily gracious for their error." --MARCUS AURELIUS, .. | Ryan Holiday | ||
| fc0ba5c | Is that to say that managing your image isn't important? Of course not. Early in your career, you'll notice that you jump on every opportunity to do so. As you become more accomplished, you'll realize that so much of it is a distraction from your work - time spent with reporters, with awards, and with marketing are time away from what you really care about. Who has time to look at a picture of himself? What's the point? | Ryan Holiday | ||
| 9b5ead0 | Leaders like Belichick and Merkel know that steak is what wins games and moves nations forward. Sizzle, on the other hand, makes it harder to make the right decisions. | Ryan Holiday | ||
| d31d288 | Reversals and regressions are as much a part of the cycle of life as anything else. | failure | Ryan Holiday | |
| 07836a9 | Blank spaces, begging to be filled in with thoughts, with photos, with stories. With what we're going to do, with what things should or could be like, what we hope will happen. Technology, asking you, prodding you, soliciting talk. | Ryan Holiday | ||
| 8d868e6 | At the beginning of any path, we're excited and nervous. So we seek to comfort ourselves externally instead of inwardly. There's a weak side to each of us, that--like a trade union--isn't exactly malicious but at the end of the day still wants to get as much public credit and attention as it can for doing the least. That side we call ego. | Ryan Holiday | ||
| 12ee792 | We seem to think that silence is a sign of weakness. That being ignored is tantamount to death (and for the ego, this is true). So we talk, talk, talk as though our life depends on it. | Ryan Holiday | ||
| 69d91fb | Easier in the sense that you know now what it is you need to do and what is important to you. The other "choices" wash away, as they aren't really choices at all. They're distractions. It's about the doing, not the recognition. Easier in the sense that you don't need to compromise. Harder because each opportunity--no matter how gratifying or rewarding--must be evaluated along strict guidelines: Does this help me do what I have set out to do.. | Ryan Holiday | ||
| 2bf8e47 | The purpose of Shamrock's formula is simple: to get real and continuous feedback about what they know and what they don't know from every angle. It purges out the ego that puffs us up, the fear that makes us doubt ourselves, and any laziness that might make us want to coast. As Shamrock observed, "False ideas about yourself destroy you. For me, I always stay a student. That's what martial arts are about, and you have to use that humility as.. | Ryan Holiday | ||
| dd239e0 | That's why the philosophers warn us not to be satisfied with mere learning, but to add practice and then training. For as time passes we forget what we learned and end up doing the opposite, and hold opinions the opposite of what we should." --EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 2.9.13-14" -- | Ryan Holiday | ||
| 9cf1b10 | Atreus: Who would reject the flood of fortune's gifts? Thyestes: Anyone who has experienced how easily they flow back." --SENECA, THYESTES, 536" | Ryan Holiday | ||
| d724df4 | How does your ruling reason manage itself? For in that is the key to everything. Whatever else remains, be it in the power of your choice or not, is but a corpse and smoke." --MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 12.33" | Ryan Holiday | ||
| dc5ba4b | What is bad luck? Opinion. What are conflict, dispute, blame, accusation, irreverence, and frivolity? They are all opinions, and more than that, they are opinions that lie outside of our own reasoned choice, presented as if they were good or evil. Let a person shift their opinions only to what belongs in the field of their own choice, and I guarantee that person will have peace of mind, whatever is happening around them. | Ryan Holiday | ||
| c012372 | When you let your attention slide for a bit, don't think you will get back a grip on it whenever you wish--instead, bear in mind that because of today's mistake everything that follows will be necessarily worse.... Is it possible to be free from error? Not by any means, but it is possible to be a person always stretching to avoid error. For we must be content to at least escape a few mistakes by never letting our attention slide." --EPICTET.. | Ryan Holiday | ||
| fbf4b68 | There are two kinds of people in this world. The first looks at others who have accomplished things and thinks: Why them? Why not me? The other looks at those same people and thinks: If they can do it, why can't I? | Ryan Holiday | ||
| a045090 | There are two ways to be wealthy--to get everything you want or to want everything you have. | satisfaction wealth wisdom | Ryan Holiday | |
| 844261b | You say, good fortune used to meet you at every corner. But the fortunate person is the one who gives themselves a good fortune. And good fortunes are a well-tuned soul, good impulses and good actions." --MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 5.36" | Ryan Holiday | ||
| abcf6df | August 21st DON'T BE MISERABLE IN ADVANCE "It's ruinous for the soul to be anxious about the future and miserable in advance of misery, engulfed by anxiety that the things it desires might remain its own until the very end. For such a soul will never be at rest--by longing for things to come it will lose the ability to enjoy present things." --SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 98.5b-6a The way we nervously worry about some looming bad news is strange .. | Ryan Holiday | ||
| ae7f62a | The diseases of the rational soul are long-standing and hardened vices, such as greed and ambition--they have put the soul in a straitjacket and have begun to be permanent evils inside it. To put it briefly, this sickness is an unrelenting distortion of judgment, so things that are only mildly desirable are vigorously sought after." --SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 75.11" | Ryan Holiday | ||
| e8174ab | Reflect, then," he said, "that your ancestors set up those trophies, not that you may gaze at them in wonder, but that you may also imitate the virtues of the men who set them up." | Ryan Holiday | ||
| cda5c8c | Every habit and capability is confirmed and grows in its corresponding actions, walking by walking, and running by running ... therefore, if you want to do something make a habit of it, if you don't want to do that, don't, but make a habit of something else instead. The same principle is at work in our state of mind. When you get angry, you've not only experienced that evil, but you've also reinforced a bad habit, adding fuel to the fire." .. | Ryan Holiday | ||
| af69506 | You can take the bite out of any tough situation by bringing a calm mind to it. By considering it and meditating on it in advance. | Ryan Holiday | ||
| 08e1260 | Epictetus says we must discover the missing art of assent and pay special attention to the sphere of our impulses--that they are subject to reservation, to the common good, and that they are in proportion to actual worth." --MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 11.37" | Ryan Holiday | ||
| 76e0ce6 | Show me that the good life doesn't consist in its length, but in its use, and that it is possible--no, entirely too common--for a person who has had a long life to have lived too little." --SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 49.10b" | Ryan Holiday | ||
| cb0d944 | In outer space you develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, 'Look at that, you son of a bitch. | Ryan Holiday | ||
| c375fd9 | Then what makes a beautiful human being? Isn't it the presence of human excellence? Young friend, if you wish to be beautiful, then work diligently at human excellence. And what is that? Observe those whom you praise without prejudice. The just or the unjust? The just. The even-tempered or the undisciplined? The even-tempered. The self-controlled or the uncontrolled? The self-controlled. In making yourself that kind of person, you will beco.. | Ryan Holiday | ||
| 75074d3 | What is bad luck? Opinion. What are conflict, dispute, blame, accusation, irreverence, and frivolity? They are all opinions, and more than that, they are opinions that lie outside of our own reasoned choice, presented as if they were good or evil. Let a person shift their opinions only to what belongs in the field of their own choice, and I guarantee that person will have peace of mind, whatever is happening around them." --EPICTETUS, DISCO.. | Ryan Holiday | ||
| 35b29fe | Show me someone sick and happy, in danger and happy, dying and happy, exiled and happy, disgraced and happy. Show me! By God, how much I'd like to see a Stoic. But since you can't show me someone that perfectly formed, at least show me someone actively forming themselves so, inclined in this way.... Show me!" --EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 2.19.24-25a, 28" | Ryan Holiday | ||
| 4b0cfe7 | if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. | Ryan Holiday | ||
| e1ac185 | Our ambition should not be to win, then, but to play with our full effort. | Ryan Holiday | ||
| fe1b74f | We don't abandon our pursuits because we despair of ever perfecting them." --EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 1.2.37b" | Ryan Holiday | ||
| 63a6b2e | First, you ought to live your own life in such a way that it doesn't negatively impose on others. Second, you have to be open-minded and accepting enough to let others do the same. Can you do that? Even when you really, really disagree with the choices they're making? Can you understand that their life is their business and yours is your own? And that you've got plenty to wrestle with yourself without bothering anyone else? | Ryan Holiday | ||
| 59c39ce | In your actions, don't procrastinate. In your conversations, don't confuse. In your thoughts, don't wander. In your soul, don't be passive or aggressive. In your life, don't be all about business." --MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 8.51" | Ryan Holiday | ||
| 8c97d5c | we all thought that money would be the answer, that success was the highest prize, that the undying love of a beautiful person would finally make us feel warm inside. | Ryan Holiday | ||
| 4690b5e | So if you need an extra boost to get out of bed this morning, if you need something more than caffeine can offer, use this. People are depending on you. Your purpose is to help us render this great work together. And we're waiting and excited for you to show up. | Ryan Holiday | ||
| 6b22311 | Philosophy calls for simple living, but not for penance--it's quite possible to be simple without being crude. | Ryan Holiday |