Reader > Reader's Quotes

“I came to the Greeks early, and I found answers in them. Greece's great men let all their acts turn on the immortality of the soul. We don't really act as if we believed in the soul's immortality and that's why we are where we are today.”
― Edith Hamilton

“there is nothing outside of yourself that can ever enable you to get better, stronger, richer, quicker, or smarter. Everything is within. Everything exists. Seek nothing outside of yourself.”
― Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings

“You must understand that there is more than one path to the top of the mountain”
― Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy

“There is no one way to salvation, whatever the manner in which a man may proceed. All forms and variations are governed by the eternal intelligence of the Universe that enables a man to approach perfection. It may be in the arts of music and painting or it may be in commerce, law, or medicine. It may be in the study of war or the study of peace. Each is as important as any other. Spiritual enlightenment through religious meditation such as Zen or in any other way is as viable and functional as any "Way."... A person should study as they see fit.”
― Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy

“Both in fighting and in everyday life you should be determined though calm. Meet the situation without tenseness yet not recklessly, your spirit settled yet unbiased. Even when your spirit is calm do not let your body relax, and when your body is relaxed do not let your spirit slacken. Do not let your spirit be influenced by your body, or your body be influenced by your spirit.”
― Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy

“This is the way for men who want to learn my strategy:
1. Do not think dishonestly.
2. The Way is in training.
3. Become acquainted with every art.
4. Know the Ways of all professions.
5. Distinguish between gain and loss in worldly matters.
6. Develop intuitive judgement and understanding for everything.
7. Perceive those things which cannot be seen.
8. Pay attention even to trifles.
9. Do nothing which is of no use.”
― Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy

“If you are not progressing along the true way, a slight twist in the mind can become a major twist. This must be pondered well.”
― Miyamoto Musashi, The Complete Book of Five Rings

“Accept everything just the way it is.
Do not seek pleasure for its own sake.
Do not, under any circumstances, depend on a partial feeling.
Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.
Be detached from desire your whole life long.
Do not regret what you have done.
Never be jealous.
Never let yourself be saddened by a separation.
Resentment and complaint are appropriate neither for oneself nor others.
Do not let yourself be guided by the feeling of lust or love.
In all things have no preferences.
Be indifferent to where you live.
Do not pursue the taste of good food.
Do not hold on to possessions you no longer need.
Do not act following customary beliefs.
Do not collect weapons or practice with weapons beyond what is useful.
Do not fear death.
Do not seek to possess either goods or fiefs for your old age.
Respect God without counting on help.
You may abandon your own body, but you must preserve your honor.
Last- Never stray from the Way.”
― Miyamoto Musashi

“To win any battle, you must fight as if you are already dead.”
― Miyamoto Musashi

“I really, really think the secret to being loved is to love. And the secret to being interesting is to be interested. And the secret to having a friend is being a friend.... Be brave. Like somebody.”
― Glennon Doyle, We Can Do Hard Things: Answers to Life's 20 Questions

“I would also urge leaders to remain humble. If you don’t worry about who gets the credit, you get a lot more done.”
― Dick Winters, Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters

“Truth has drawn me into the field of politics; and I can say without the slightest hesitation, and yet in all humility, that those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi: An Autobiography

“Finally, this is better, that one do His own task as he may, even though he fail, Than take tasks not his own, though they seem good. To die performing duty is no ill; But who seeks other roads shall wander still.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, My Experiments with Truth: An Autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi

“A Satyagrahi obeys the laws of society intelligently and of his own free will, because he considers it to be his sacred duty to do so. It is only when a person has thus obeyed the laws of society scrupulously that he is in a position to judge as to which particular rules are good and just and which unjust and iniquitous. Only then does the right accrue to him of the civil disobedience of certain laws in well defined circumstances.”
― Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments with Truth: An Autobiography

“All that appears and happens about and around us is uncertain, transient. But there is a Supreme Being hidden therein as a Certainly, and one would be blessed if one could catch a glimpse of that Certainty and hitch one’s waggon to it. The quest for that Truth is the summum bonum of life.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth

“The consequences of the regulation regarding the use of footpaths were rather serious for me. I always went out for a walk through President Street to an open plain. President Kruger’s house was in this street – a very modest, unostentatious building, without a garden and not distinguishable from other houses in its neighbourhood. The houses of many of the millionaires in Pretoria were far more pretentious, and were surrounded by gardens. Indeed President Kruger’s simplicity was proverbial. Only the presence of a police patrol before the house indicated that it belonged to some official. I nearly always went along the footpaths past this patrol without the slightest hitch or hindrance.

Now the man on duty used to be changed from time to time. Once one of these men, without giving me the slightest warning, without even asking me to leave the footpath, pushed and kicked me into the street. I was dismayed. Before I could question him as to his behaviour, Mr Coates, who happened to be passing the spot on horseback, hailed me and said:

‘Gandhi, I have seen everything. I shall gladly be your witness in court if you proceed against the man. I am very sorry you have been so rudely assaulted.’

‘You need not be sorry,’ I said. ‘What does the poor man know? All coloured people are the same to him. He no doubt treats Negroes just as he has treated me. I have made it a rule not to go to court in respect of any personal grievance. So I do not intend to proceed against him.’

‘That is just like you,’ said Mr Coates, ‘but do think it over again. We must teach such men a lesson.’ He then spoke to the policeman and reprimanded him. I could not follow their talk, as it was in Dutch, the policeman being a Boer. But he apologized to me, for which there was no need. I had already forgiven him.

But I never again went through this street. There would be other men coming in this man’s place and, ignorant of the incident, they would behave likewise. Why should I unnecessarily court another kick? I therefore selected a different walk.

The incident deepened my feeling for the Indian settlers. I discussed with them the advisability of making a test case, if it were found necessary to do so, after having seen the British Agent in the matter of these regulations.

I thus made an intimate study of the hard condition of the Indian settlers, not only by reading and hearing about it, but by personal experience. I saw that South Africa was no country for a self-respecting Indian, and my mind became more and more occupied with the question as to how this state of things might be improved.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi: An Autobiography

“How do you react when you think you need people's love? Do you become a slave for their approval? Do you live an inauthentic life because you can't bear the thought that they might disapprove of you? Do you try to figure out how they would like you to be, and then try to become that, like a chameleon? In fact, you never really get their love. You turn into someone you aren't, and then when they say "I love you," you can't believe it, because they're loving a facade. They're loving someone who doesn't even exist, the person you're pretending to be. It's difficult to seek other people's love. It's deadly. In seeking it, you lose what is genuine. This is the prison we create for ourselves as we seek what we already have.”
― Byron Katie

“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

“I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“Keep growing quietly and seriously throughout your whole development; you cannot disturb it more rudely than by looking outward and expecting from outside replies to questions that only your inmost feeling in your most hushed hour can perhaps answer.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“most people come to know only one corner of their room, one spot near the window, one narrow strip on which they keep walking back and forth.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“And you should not let yourself be confused in your solitude by the fact that there is something in you that wants to move out of it.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“In this there is no measuring with time, a year doesn’t matter, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“Most people feel best about their work the week before their vacation, but it's not because of the vacation itself. What do you do the last week before you leave on a big trip? You clean up, close up, clarify, and renegotiate all your agreements with yourself and others. I just suggest that you do this weekly instead of yearly.”
― David Allen, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

“Do not be trapped by the need to achieve anything. This way, you achieve everything.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah