Max Braunstein > Max's Quotes

“Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.”
― Richard Feynmann

“Any framework, method, or label you impose on yourself is just as likely to be a limitation as an opening.”
― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

“Our life is a series of moments. Let them all go. Moments. All gathering towards this one.”
― Now Is Good

“You are under no obligation to remain the same person you were a year ago, a month ago, or even a day ago. You are here to create yourself, continuously.”
― Richard Feynman

“Think of the universe as an eternal creative unfolding.
Trees blossom.
Cells replicate.
Rivers forge new tributaries.
The world pulses with productive energy, and everything that exists on this planet is driven by that energy.
Every manifestation of this unfolding is doing its own work on behalf of the universe, each in its own way, true to its own creative impulse.”
― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

“How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“Everything must be carried to term before it is born. To let every impression and the germ of every feeling come to completion inside, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, in what is unattainable to one’s own intellect, and to wait with deep humility and patience for the hour when a new clarity is delivered.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“Let your beauty manifest itself
without talking and calculation.
You are silent. It says for you: I am.
And comes in meaning thousandfold,
comes at long last over everyone.

(Gieb deine Schönheit immer hin
ohne Rechnen und Reden.
Du schweigst. Sie sagt für dich: Ich bin.
Und kommt in tausendfachem Sinn,
kommt endlich über jeden.)”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Images

“No amount of guilt can change the past, and no amount of worrying can change the future. Go easy on yourself, for the outcome of all affairs is determined by Allaah’s decree.

If something is meant to go elsewhere, it will never come your way, but if it is yours by destiny, from it you cannot flee.”
― Umar Ibn Al-Khattaab

“No amount of anxiety makes any difference to anything that is going to happen.”
― Alan Watts

“Talent is the ability to let ideas manifest themselves through you.”
― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

“You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves—like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. The point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“If you are asked to achieve an ending somehow, this also means that you are receiving an order to begin anew; a new beginning is always possible - who should refuse it? (Letters on Life)”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

“This We Have Now

This we have now
is not imagination.

This is not
grief or joy.

Not a judging state,
or an elation,
or sadness.

Those come
and go.

This is the presence
that doesn't.

It's dawn, Husam,
here in the splendor of coral,
inside the Friend, the simple truth
of what Hallaj said.

What else could human beings want?

When grapes turn to wine
they're wanting
this.

When the nightsky pours by,
it's really a crowd of beggars,
and they all want some of this!

This
that we are now
created the body, cell by cell,
like bees building a honeycomb.

The human body and the universe
grew from this, not this
from the universe and the human body.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“Lord free me of myself, so I can please you!”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

“Love is never wasted, for its value does not rest on reciprocity.”
― C.S. Lewis

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“Don't dilute yourself for any person or any reason. You are enough! Be unapologetically you.”
― Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience

“I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature and Selected Essays

“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.”
― Kahlil Gibran

“52. You don’t have to turn this into something. It doesn’t have to upset you. Things can’t shape our decisions by themselves.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”
― Maya Angelou

“Forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn't know before you learned it.”
― Maya Angelou

“...what matters in life is not whether we receive a round of applause; what matters is whether we have the courage to venture forth despite the uncertainty of acclaim.”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

“Fate would not have the reputation it has, if it simply did what it seemed it would do.”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

“If patience wasn’t so easily tested, then it would hardly be a virtue. . . ”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

“For his part, the Count had opted for the life of the purposefully unrushed. Not only was he disinclined to race toward some appointed hour - disdaining even to wear a watch - he took the greatest satisfaction when assuring a friend that a worldly matter could wait in favor of a leisurely lunch or stroll along the embankment. After all, did not wine improve with age? Was it not the passage of years that gave a piece of furniture its delightful patina? When all was said and done, the endeavors that most modern men saw as urgent (such as appointments with bankers and the catching of trains), probably could have waited, while those they deemed frivolous (such as cups of tea and friendly chats) had deserved their immediate attention.”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

“Here, indeed, was a formidable sentence--one that was on intimate terms with a comma, and that held the period in healthy disregard.”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

“Nature is busy creating absolutely unique individuals, whereas culture has invented a single mold to which all must conform. It is grotesque. ”
― U. G. Krishnamurti