Mary Oliver
“Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.” – Marcus Aurelius
“Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.”
Jean-Paul Sartre
“We have a large minority of people who simply do not want to do better. They don’t want to get married. They don’t want to raise their children in sensible normal conditions. They don’t want to work hard in order to achieve success. They don’t value education. They don’t believe in taking responsibility for their life choices. They don’t believe in self-reflection. They think someone owes them something. They feel entitled to other people’s success. Everything that is counter-productive and dysfunctional they gravitate towards.”
“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
Thoreau
“I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.”-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”
Marcus Aurelius
“To live is to choose. But to choose well, you must know who you are and what you stand for, where you want to go and why you want to get there.”
Kofi Annan (Ghanaian diplomat, seventh secretary-general of the United Nations, 2001 Nobel Peace Prize.)
“It is not living that matters, but living rightly.” – Socrates
“Whom Do I Call Educated?”
“Whom do I call educated?
First, those who manage well the circumstances they encounter day by day.
Next, those who are decent and honorable in their intercourse with all men, bearing easily and good naturedly what is offensive in others and being as agreeable and reasonable to their associates as is humanly possible to be… those who hold their pleasures always under control and are not ultimately overcome by their misfortunes… those who are not spoiled by their successes, who do not desert their true selves but hold their ground steadfastly as wise and sober – minded men.”
Socrates