Ian Maclean > Ian's Quotes

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#1

“It is an absolute human certainty that no one can know his own beauty or perceive a sense of his own worth until it has been reflected back to him in the mirror of another loving, caring human being.”
― John Joseph Powell, The Secret of Staying in Love

tags: affection, alone, beauty, camaraderie, caring, caring-for-others, closeness, companionship, compassion, connectedness, connection, disconnection, empathy, estrangement, fellowship, friendship, friendship-quotes, hug, hugs, intimacy, isolation, kindness, kindred-spirits, loneliness, love, love-at-first-sight, love-quotes, lovers, loving, loving-someone, mirror, mutuality, partnership, reciprocal, reciprocity, reflected-in-you, relationship, relationship-quotes, relationships, romance, self-belief, self-esteem, self-hatred, self-realization, self-worth, self-worthiness, soul-mate, soulmates, togetherness, touch, twin-flames

1780 likes

#2

“Any person capable of angering you becomes your master;
he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him.”
― Epictetus

644 likes

#3

“Τίς εἶναι θέλεις, σαυτῷ πρῶτον εἰπέ: εἶθ' οὕτως ποίει ἃ ποιεῖς. (First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.)”
― Epictetus, The Discourses

223 likes

#4

“Other people's views and troubles can be contagious. Don't sabotage yourself by unwittingly adopting negative, unproductive attitudes through your associations with others.”
― Epictetus

354 likes

#5

“Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.”
― Epictetus

tags: control, freedom, goal, happiness, life, philosophy

519 likes

#6

“I laugh at those who think they can damage me. They do not know who I am, they do not know what I think, they cannot even touch the things which are really mine and with which I live.”
― Epictetus

276 likes

#7

“Attach yourself to what is spiritually superior, regardless of what other people think or do. Hold to your true aspirations no matter what is going on around you.”
― Epictetus

247 likes

#8

“To accuse others for one's own misfortune is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete.”
― Epictetus

270 likes

#9

“People are not disturbed by things, but by the views they take of them.”
― Epictetus, Enchiridion

406 likes

#10

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”
― Ernest Hemingway

tags: humility, self-improvement

5348 likes

#11

“One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

tags: art, good-life, music, poetry, self-improvement

4392 likes

#12

“What we call our destiny is truly our character and that character can be altered. The knowledge that we are responsible for our actions and attitudes does not need to be discouraging, because it also means that we are free to change this destiny. One is not in bondage to the past, which has shaped our feelings, to race, inheritance, background. All this can be altered if we have the courage to examine how it formed us. We can alter the chemistry provided we have the courage to dissect the elements.”
― Anais Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

tags: character, courage, destiny, empowerment, responsibility, self-control, self-improvement

993 likes

#13

“When you see a good person, think of becoming like her/him. When you see someone not so good, reflect on your own weak points.”
― Confucius

972 likes

#14

“We first make our habits, then our habits make us.”
― John Dryden

tags: adaptation, change, habit, self-improvement

275 likes

#15

“[T]o believe in a god is in one way to express a willingness to believe in anything. Whereas to reject the belief is by no means to profess belief in nothing.”
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

tags: belief

12 likes

#16

“Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian

tags: rational-thought, science

1072 likes

#17

“At that moment, when the world around him melted away, when he stood alone like a star in the heavens, he was overwhelmed by a feeling of icy despair, but he was more firmly himself than ever. That was the last shudder of his awakening, the last pains of birth. Immediately he moved on again and began to walk quickly and impatiently, no longer homewards, no longer to his father, no longer looking backwards.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

tags: family, metamorphosis, self-knowledge

8 likes

#18

“I wanted a metamorphosis, a change to fish, to leviathan, to destroyer. I wanted the earth to open up, to swallow everything in one engulfing yawn. I wanted to see the city buried fathoms deep in the bosom of the sea. I wanted to sit in a cave and read by candlelight. I wanted that eye extinguished so that I might have a chance to know my own body, my own desires. I wanted to be alone for a thousand years in order to reflect on what I had seen and heard - and in order to forget.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn

tags: alone, candlelight, caves, desires, forget, leviathan, metamorphosis, reflect, yawn

90 likes

#19

“The books we need are of the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that makes us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide, lost in a forest remote from all human habitation.”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial

tags: existentialism, kafka, metamorphosis, trial

171 likes

#20

“Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else ... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

tags: communication, foolishness, knowledge, sharing, teaching, wisdom

2377 likes

#21

“So she thoroughly taught him that one cannot take pleasure without giving pleasure, and that every gesture, every caress, every touch, every glance, every last bit of the body has its secret, which brings happiness to the person who knows how to wake it. She taught him that after a celebration of love the lovers should not part without admiring each other, without being conquered or having conquered, so that neither is bleak or glutted or has the bad feeling of being used or misused.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

tags: love, making-love, pleasure, respect, sensuality, sex, touch

724 likes

#22

“Words do not express thoughts very well. they always become a little different immediately they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish. And yet it also pleases me and seems right that what is of value and wisdom to one man seems nonsense to another.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

686 likes

#23

“The reason why I do not know anything about myself, the reason why Siddhartha has remained alien and unknown to myself is due to one thing, to one single thing--I was afraid of myself, I was fleeing from myself. I was seeking Atman, I was seeking Brahman, I was determined to dismember myself and tear away its layers of husk in order to find in its unknown innermost recess the kernel at the heart of those layers, the Atman, life, the divine principle, the ultimate. But in so doing, I was losing myself.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

tags: losing-myself

162 likes

#24

“He lost his Self a thousand times and for days on end he dwelt in non-being. But although the paths took him away from Self, in the end they always led back to it. Although Siddhartha fled from the Self a thousand times, dwelt in nothing, dwelt in animal and stone, the return was inevitable; the hour was inevitable when he would again find himself in sunshine or in moonlight, in shadow or in rain, and was again Self and Siddhartha, again felt the torment of the onerous life cycle.”
― Herman Hesse, Siddhartha: An Indian Tale

tags: loss, personhood

102 likes

#25

“When you throw a rock into the water, it will speed on the fastest course to the bottom of the water. This is how it is when Siddhartha has a goal, a resolution. Siddhartha does nothing, he waits, he thinks, he fasts, but he passes through the things of the world like a rock through water, without doing anything, without stirring; he is drawn, he lets himself fall. His goal attracts him, because he doesn't let anything enter his soul which might oppose the goal. This is what Siddhartha has learned among the Samanas. This is what fools call magic and which they think is effected by demons. Nothing is effected by demons, there are no demons. Everyone can perform magic, everyone can reach his goals, if he is able to think, if he is able to wait, if he is able to fast.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

117 likes

#26

“You love nobody. Is that not true?"
"Maybe," said Siddhartha wearily. "I am like you. You cannot love either, otherwise how could you practice love as an art? Perhaps people like us cannot love. Ordinary people can - that is their secret.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

71 likes

#27

“What should I possibly have to tell you, oh venerable one? Perhaps that you're searching far too much? That in all that searching, you don't find the time for finding?”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

tags: finding, searching

73 likes

#28

“He meditated on the use to which he should put all the energy of youth which comes to a man only once in life. Should he devote this power, which is not the strength of intellect or heart or education, but an urge which once spent can never return, the power given to a man once only to make himself, or even – so it seems to him at the time – the universe into anything he wishes: should he devote it to art, to science, to love, or to practical activities? True, there are people who never have this urge: at the outset of life they place their necks under the first yoke that offers itself, and soberly toil away in it to the end of their days.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Cossacks

12 likes

#29

“Why are old lovers able to become friends? Two reasons. They never truly loved each other, or they love each other still.”
― Whitney Otto, How to Make an American Quilt

tags: exes, friendship, love

1746 likes