Stef DC > Stef's Quotes

“If we experience any failures or setbacks, we do not forget them because they offend our self-esteem. Instead we reflect on them deeply, trying to figure out what went wrong and discern whether there are any patterns to our mistakes.”
― Robert Greene, Mastery

“A natural response when people feel overwhelmed is to retreat into various forms of passivity. If we don’t try too much in life, if we limit our circle of action, we can give ourselves the illusion of control. The less we attempt, the less chances of failure. If we can make it look like we are not really responsible for our fate, for what happens to us in life, then our apparent powerlessness is more palatable.”
― Robert Greene, Mastery

“You must understand the following: In order to master a field, you must love the subject and feel a profound connection to it. Your interest must transcend the field itself and border on the religious.”
― Robert Greene, Mastery

“Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still it is never complete.”
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

“Science may provide the most useful way to organize empirical, reproducible data, but its power to do so is predicated on its inability to grasp the most central aspects of human life: hope, fear, love, hate, beauty, envy, honor, weakness, striving, suffering, virtue.”
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

“The tricky part of illness is that, as you go through it, your values are constantly changing. You try to figure out what matters to you, and then you keep figuring it out. It felt like someone had taken away my credit card and I was having to learn how to budget. You may decide you want to spend your time working as a neurosurgeon, but two months later, you may feel differently. Two months after that, you may want to learn to play the saxophone or devote yourself to the church. Death may be a one-time event, but living with terminal illness is a process.”
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
― Rumi

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
― Rumi

“What you seek is seeking you.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

“If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?”
― Rumi

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
― Rumi

“Forget safety.
Live where you fear to live.
Destroy your reputation.
Be notorious.”
― Rumi

“Knock, And He'll open the door
Vanish, And He'll make you shine like the sun
Fall, And He'll raise you to the heavens
Become nothing, And He'll turn you into everything.”
― Jalal Ad-Din Rumi

“My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that, and I intend to end up there.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

“Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.”
― Rumi

“Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

“Travel brings power and love back into your life.”
― Rumi Jalalud-Din

“Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.”
― Rumi

“Suffering is a gift. In it is hidden mercy.”
― Rumi

“Wherever you are, and whatever you do, be in love.”
― Rumi

“Reason is powerless in the expression of Love.”
― Rumi

“You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.”
― Rumi

“Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone's soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.”
― Rumi

“There is a secret medicine given only to those who hurt so hard they can't hope.

The hopers would feel slighted if they knew.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“Give up to grace. The ocean takes care of each wave 'til it gets to shore. You need more help than you know.”
― Rumi, Words of Paradise: Selected Poems of Rumi

“I once had a thousand desires. But in my one desire to know you all else melted away.”
― Rumi

“This is how I would die
into the love I have for you:
As pieces of cloud
dissolve in sunlight.”
― Rumi

“Try something different. Surrender.”
― Rumi

“Love is the whole thing.
We are only pieces.”
― Rumi

“An America that asks what it owes its most vulnerable citizens is improved and humane. An America that looks away is ignoring not just the sins of the past but the sins of the present and the certain sins of the future.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy