10 Ideas, Quotes and Aphorisms

 

1. “A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition.” (Henry Miller, The Books in My Life)
2. “anteambulo” (Latin) - walk before. Think: the person who clears the path controls the direction. 
3. “When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own—not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me.” (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2.1)
4. “Many words have been spoken by Plato, Zeno, Chrysippus, Posidonius, and by a whole host of equally excellent Stoics. I’ll tell you how people can prove their words to be their own—by putting into practice what they’ve been preaching.” (Seneca, Moral Letters, 108.35; 38)
5. “When you do things for people, rather than demand things from them . . . it demonstrates that you truly care about them.” (Mitch Horowitz)
6. “The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom.” (From the 2005 Kenyon College Commencement Speech, “This Is Water” by David Foster Wallace)
7. “Cease then to grieve for your private afflictions, and address yourselves instead to the safety of the commonwealth.” (Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, 2.61. 4)
8. “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.” (Epictetus, Discourses , 4.19)
9. “So it is—the life we receive is not short, but we make it so, nor do we have lack of it, but are wasteful of it.” (Seneca, On The Brevity of Life. Ch. 1)
10. “Some of the best things come in small packages. But large things can't.  Unless they're inflatable, or require some assembly, or unless they're hearts. Yes, giant, juicy, loving hearts.  As big as the moon, but much, much warmer."  (The Tick)