W. Ryan Melson
https://www.goodreads.com/wryanmelson
What God and good luck provide we must accept with gratitude. Our time is our time. It’s up to us to make the most of it, make it amount to more than the sum of our days.
“Lincoln had stepped outside his adversity, to study it within his own mind—and by doing so he drew boundaries around it. That allowed him to place the adversity in context, thereby restoring his perspective—and with it his emotional balance.”
― Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude
― Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude
“Leadership, like fertilizer, contains elements that can be volatile or nurturing, depending on how one handles them.”
― Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude
― Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude
“In times of shared sacrifice, a leader must inspire moral courage in his followers as well as in himself. In such times the leader’s responsibilities are especially great, for a leader’s first obligation is to take care of his people. If he cannot provide for them in material ways, he must provide for their spirit. To do so requires humility: although the leader has more power than his followers, he must recognize that as to the things that govern human worth—dignity, character, decency—his station counts for nothing. He must hold the conviction that, as to these things, he is not above his followers, but among them. For only then can he speak to these things in ways that inspire his followers.”
― Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude
― Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude
“What God and good luck provide we must accept with gratitude. Our time is our time. It’s up to us to make the most of it, make it amount to more than the sum of our days.”
― The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights, and Other Appreciations
― The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights, and Other Appreciations
“When a gale strikes, a leader’s place is not belowdecks, but at the helm. He should strive to maintain a measure of detachment, both from the emotion of others around him and from the crisis itself, observing it clinically, dispassionately. And he must focus his thinking strictly on the decisions he needs to make, rather than on the consequences that might follow if his decisions are wrong. This detachment and focus will afford him as much isolation as circumstances allow, and they will make him resistant to the emotional tumult around him. From there, the leader must draw upon his inner strength.”
― Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude
― Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude
Stoic Book Club
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— last activity Feb 17, 2026 10:41PM
This club is about traditional Stoicism with the distinct purpose of enabling and promoting discourse on Stoic philosophy as a way of life.
W. Ryan’s 2025 Year in Books
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