As Dave explained to me, his own father wrote him a handwritten note every week during his freshman year of college. Still touched by this gesture, Dave began a habit of drawing a new picture every night to place in his oldest daughter’s lunchbox. His two youngest children watched this ritual with interest. When they became old enough for lunchboxes, they were excited to start receiving their daily drawings as well. “Fast-forward a couple of years, and I’m spending a decent chunk of time every night doing three drawings!” Dave told me with obvious pride. “This wouldn’t have been possible if I didn’t protect how I spend my time.” Location 489-493
Thoreau establishes early in Walden: “The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.” Location 546-547
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone,” Blaise Pascal famously wrote. Location 1131-1132
Storr notes that the need to spend a great deal of time alone was common among “the majority of poets, novelists, and composers.” Location 1140-1141
Three crucial benefits provided by solitude: “new ideas; an understanding of the self; and closeness to others.” Location 1153-1154
Experiencing separation, he argues, builds your appreciation for interpersonal connections when they do occur. Location 1157-1157
Regular doses of solitude, mixed in with our default mode of sociality, are necessary to flourish as a human being. Location 1164-1165
The urgency we feel to always have a phone with us is exaggerated. To live permanently without these devices would be needlessly annoying, but to regularly spend a few hours away from them should give you no pause. Location 1345-1346
They found, for example, that if you increase the amount of likes or links clicked by a standard deviation, mental health decreases by 5 to 8 percent of a standard deviation. Location 1624-1625
The idea that it’s valuable to maintain vast numbers of weak-tie social connections is largely an invention of the past decade or so. Location 1796-1797
A life well lived requires activities that serve no other purpose than the satisfaction that the activity itself generates. Location 1911-1912
You can’t, in other words, build a billion-dollar empire like Facebook if you’re wasting hours every day using a service like Facebook. Location 2291-2292
“Best-selling authors start writing their book with the book description. This exercise helps you get focused and lets your ideal readers know immediately if they want to buy your book.” (25)
“Don’t say the book is for everyone… No one wants to buy a book for everyone. They want to buy a book that speaks to them.” (27)
“MY BOOK TITLE is a CATEGORY that helps PRIMARY AUDIENCE achieve PRIMARY BENEFIT.” (31)
“‘Creativity is intelligence having fun.’ -Albert Einstein” (71)
“Readers buy your book for one purpose: to solve a problem. If you can show you understand who they are, what motivates them, and what keeps them up at night, you will earn a reader.” (71) “Here’s a surprise alert: People like to see you are vulnerable and have made mistakes. People don’t want to sit at the feet of infallible experts. They want to relate to people like them who have battle scars, who have tasted defeat, and who learned from their mistakes. Readers pay you to make sure they don’t make the same mistakes.” (72)
“‘That’ Can usually be removed. If it sounds good without it, you’re set. If it sounds awkward, keep it. ‘The’ can be cut sometimes. ‘The’ can be cut if it refers to a noun, and you can make the noun plural. A prepositional phrase start with ‘of,’ could be rewritten. Prepositional phrases using ‘of’ can be deleted sometimes. Is/are and a verb ending in ‘ing’ can be changed to the verb form only. Usually you can cut these words: very, now, just, only, and even. Read the sentence without the word. See how it looks. Hear how it sounds. If it sounds good, then cut the words.” (132)
“As they say in Russian, “Life is better there where we are not.”” (128)
“Happiness is always something on the horizon. We need to head towards it, but, once we get there, it moves away again.” (132)
“Whatever your delusion about what you need in order to be happy is, it becomes more powerful when it is reinforced by other people.” (133)
“When he was eight-nine and living in America and headed off to his shack every day to write for hours on end. At the time, he was extremely infirm. His wife said, ‘He hasn’t left the house for five years. Hie’s missing a vertebra… But every day he sits and works.’ That’s all you need to know about Solzhenitsyn. He’s missing a vertebra. But every day he sits and works.” (149)
“Solzhenitsyn kept regular hours and did so religiously: from 8am to 10pm every day for seventeen years, supposedly without a day off. Sometimes, he broke off to hit a ball across the adjacent tennis court.” (154)
“When his last play Moliere premiered (this was one that Stanislavsky rehearsed for four years), it received twenty-two curtain calls. But it also had four significant negative reviews and within six weeks had been canceled, after a final, unsigned article in Pravda finished it off. The headline? ‘Superficial Glitter and False Content.’ Can you imagine having your play rehearsed for four years, it getting twenty-two curtain calls and then having to close within six weeks?” (167)
“You are only really ‘from’ somewhere if you want to speak to your children in that language.” (173)
I recently read “The Little Book of Stoicism: Timeless Wisdom to Gain Resilience, Confidence, and Calmness” by Jonas Salzgeber. Below are the quotes I found most interesting. if you like the quotes, buy the book here.
“The Stoics were living proof that it’s possible for someone to be exiled to a desert island and still be happier than someone living in a place. They understood very well that there’s only a loose connection between external circumstances and our happiness.” (4)
“Stoics recognized that the good life depends on the cultivation of one’s character, on one’s choices and actions rather than on what happens in the uncontrollable world around us.” (4)
“Epictetus wrote, “So, what should each of us say to every trial we face? This is what I’ve trained for, this is my discipline!” Hey, a boxer who gets punched in the face won’t leave the ring, it’s what he prepared for, it’s his discipline.” (18)
“Stoicism has nothing to do with suppressing or hiding one’s emotions or being emotionless. Rather, it’s about acknowledging our emotions, reflecting on what causes them, and learning to redirect them for our own good.” (21)
“It’s more about unslaving ourselves from negative emotions, more like taming rather than getting rid of them.” (21)
“We can train ourselves to act calmly despite feeling angry, act courageously despite feeling anxious.” (21)
“The goal isn’t to eliminate all emotions, the goal is to not get overwhelmed by them despite their immense power.” (22)
“For the Stoics, positive emotions are more like an added bonus than a motive by themselves.” (23)
“Since every man dies, it is better to die with distinction than to live long.” -Musonius Rufus (32)
“It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.” -Marcus Aurelius (34)
“A tower of strength can be born the moment you decide to give outside events no more power over you.” (39)
“Brian Johnson translates arete as “Expressing the highest version of yourself moment to moment to moment.”” (41)
“Eudaimonia, to live a happy and smoothly flowing live. To achieve this goal, we need to be on good terms with our inner daimon, the highest version of ourselves, our natural inborn potential.” (41)
“In whatever you do, imagine there are two lines: the higher line indicating what you’re capable of and the lower line what you’re actually doing.” (41)
“Handing power to things we have no direct control over causes emotional suffering.” (57)
“If we define success as giving our best in the process, then we cannot fail, feel calmly confident, and can accept any outcome with equanimity.” (63)
“Just because we should try to accept whatever happens does not mean we approve of it. It just means that we understand that we cannot change it.” (67)
“For the Stoics, the only good lies in our voluntary actions, and our actions can only be voluntary when we’re bringing awareness into every moment.” (96)
“Epictetus says that as philosophers we should adapt to whatever happens, so that nothing happens against our will and nothing that we wish for fails to happen.” (111)
“Marcus Aurelius has a trick to bring his will into harmony with reality. He compares what happens to us to what a doctor prescribes to us. Just like you take some medicine when a doctor tells you to, we should take external events as they are, because they’re like the medicine there to help us.” (112)
“What happens to us is nature’s treatment to become better people. Those things happen for us, not against us, even if it doesn’t seem so.” (112)
“Epictetus says that if you fulfill your duties toward others, then you’re living in agreement with nature.” (147)
“People who are excited by posthumous fame forget that the people who remember them will soon die too.” -Marcus Aurelius
“We’re better off if we’re indifferent to fame and social status. After all, it’s not within our control.” (151)
“By seeking social status, we give other people power over us. We have to act in a calculated way to make them admire us, and we must refrain from doing things in their disfavor. We enslave ourselves by seeking fame.” (151)
“Epictetus observes, “Freedom is not achieved by satisfying desire, but by eliminating it.” (154)
“It’s not about not playing video games, not watching TV, not working full-time – it’s about the awareness and purposefulness we bring into these things. We can still choose to do whatever we think is worth spending our time with.” (166)
“You are disturbed not by what happens, but by your opinion about it.” (173)
“Nothing but opinion is the cause of a troubled mind.” (173)
“Harm does not come from what happens – an annoying person or unloved situation – but from your reaction to it.” (173)
“He who does not desire anything outside his control cannot be anxious.” (183)
“Don’t wish for life to be hard, but neither wish for it to be easier when it gets tough. Rather wish for the strength to deal with it. It’s an opportunity for growth.” (198)
“Epictetus says, “We would do better to remember how we react when a similar loss afflicts others.” (205)
“Seneca says, Let philosophy scrape off your own faults, rather than be a way to rail against the faults of others.” (258)
“For one week, start your days with two minutes of power. Stand in one or the other of the power poses (“Superman” pose – feet shoulder width apart and your hands on your hips, and the second pose, stand with your arms stretched out above you and to the sides, so your body forms a four pointed star – like athletes crossing the finish line), or mix the two. Spend two whole minutes. That’s a fourteen minute investment, total. Give it a try.” (57)
“Imagine yourself walking into the audition room with beliefs like this: “I love what I do.” “I get an opportunity to share my gifts with others, right now in this audition.” “I’m well-prepared for this.” “I’ve done enough.” “I’m ready.” “Aren’t they nice people/” “We’re equal partners, those interesting people over there and me.” “I’m so grateful I get to be here doing this.” “Whatever comes of this audition, it’s all good. I will have met inspiring people, shown them what I can do, and gained experience. Most of all, I will have used my time to prepare for and then do the thing I love.”” (63)
“You want a belief to move you forward, not away from something. “More peace” is toward. “Less worry” is away from. “Feeling motivated” is toward.” “Not procrastinating” is away from.” (64)
“Concern yourself with being good first, and how to move through your career second. Have the product, have the goods, have the chops, and then worry about where it’s going to take you.” (89)
“Fortune brings in some boats that are not steer’d.” -Cymbeline, Act 4, scene 3 (106)
“The brain’s neurotransmitter responsible for feelings of well-being increases more in the person who gives a gift than it does in the recipient.” (124)
“I increase the sum total of human happiness.” If we all used that as a guide, what kind of world would we create?” (130)
“Come in with your own interpretation. Because that interpretation might open a door and shine a new light on the character, and provide something the writers, director, and casting director haven’t thought of.” (143)
