Quotes About To Live By

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• My life is optimized for progress and improvement because that’s the foundation of fulfillment.
• Obstacles are those things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.
• Breathe. If you feel overwhelmed, breathe. It will calm you and release the tensions. If you are worried about something coming up, or caught up in something that already happened, breathe. It will bring you back to the present. If you are moving too fast, breathe. It will remind you to slow down, and enjoy life more. Breathe, and enjoy each moment of this life. They’re too fleeting and few to waste.
• Half of success is about avoiding mistakes. Avoid debt. Avoid stress. Avoid being a jerk. Avoid lack of sleep. Avoid gaining weight. Avoid insecure people. Avoid reacting to stupidity. Avoid mindless consuming. Avoid staying indoors all day.
• How to make a really good painting: make a few hundred really bad paintings. How to write a really good article: write a few dozen really bad articles. How to succeed: fail a lot.
• If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal ” that is your success.
• Being truly wealthy does not require having many things; rather, it requires having what one longs for. Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire.
• Don’t ever make decisions based on fear. Make decisions based on hope and possibility. Make decisions based on what should happen, not what shouldn’t.
• Becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. I see it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey doesn’t end.
• I have clearly written down a description of my definite chief aim in life, and I will never stop trying until I shall have developed sufficient self-confidence for its attainment.
• Never met anyone truly talented claiming whatever they were doing was easy. Only the mediocre live in the idea that they are talented. Excellence requires a lot of humility.
• Do the right things, do the hard things daily.
• The secret of success is… to be fully awake to everything about you.
• The great thing in this world is not so much where you stand, as in what direction you are moving.
• Failure is a feeling long before it’s an actual result.
• All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.
• The most powerful force in the universe is compounded attention. Anyone can focus on meaningful actions every now and then, but hammering away on what matters day after day is what delivers exceptional results. What you focus on becomes your life.
• Do one thing at a time. Give yourself the gift of being focused and centered.
• If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough.
• The young are ambitious, the smart lazy, the wise playful.
• It’s not the hours you put in, it’s what you put into your hours that counts.
• A successful life is not about optimizing the work-life balance, but about minimizing the work-life difference.
• Turn your time into skill. Your skill into authority. Your authority into an audience. Your audience into an income. Your income into freedom. And your freedom into others’.
• I finally figured it out. Instead of working so hard to make ends meet, work on having fewer ends.
• Preoccupation with efficacy is the main obstacle to a poetic, elegant, robust and heroic life.
• Practice doing what you need to do even when you don’t want to. Get it done first so you don’t have to keep thinking about it.
• Great things come from hard work and perseverance. No excuses.
• Plant your garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
• Gentleness is powerful. When we use gentle and loving speech, we are able to transform anger, fear, resentment and suspicion in our communication. The whole intention of loving speech is to understand the other person and to be understood.
• If you can fall in love again and again… if you can forgive as well as forget, if you can keep from growing sour, surly, bitter and cynical… you’ve got it half licked.
• Underneath the excess and the extra, the busyness and the chaos, your life is waiting.
• Time, as far as my father was concerned, was a gift you gave to other people.
• Poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.
• If you want real connection and honest answers, check your heart more than you check your phone.
• Chase nothing. Avoid nothing. Love is all about accepting.
• The older I get, the more I understand that it’s okay to live a life others don’t understand.
• There are few things more liberating in life than giving up the need to be liked by everyone.
• It has never been about quantity, but about the quality. Real friends care and they show it.
• If you don’t get out there and define yourself, you’ll be quickly and inaccurately defined by others.
• All you have is what you are, and what you give.
• Don’t trade your authenticity for approval.
• When people try to tell you who you are, don’t believe them.
• Be generous with your time and your resources and with giving credit and, especially, with your words.
• If one is shining a bright spotlight on here and now, one cannot see the past or the future anymore.
• If you approach life as though you have something to gain from it, you will never stop searching for things you do not have.
• Simplicity doesn’t change who you are, it brings you back to who you are.
• Chasing peace keeps one from peace.
• If we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving, and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves.
• The habit of looking to the future and thinking that the whole meaning of the present lies in what it will bring forth is a pernicious one.
• Don’t wait until there is no suffering in the world to be happy. The world is as it is. People are the way they are. To reject it would be to wilfully engage in ignorance. Once you accept the world and find some peace within yourself, feel free to change anything you like.
• While you are busy thinking about the things you wish you had, The current moment that you do have slips away.
• Life doesn’t require that we be the best, only that we try our best.
• The trick is to maintain a kind of naive amazement at each instant of experience.
• Envy those who see beauty in everything in the world.
• Society has sold you the greatest of lies, that the goal of life is to become happy.x9d This one chase has cost you your life.
• The fool believes his way is always correct; the wise man allows room for doubt.
• Or perhaps one can learn only by one’s own mistakes. The essential thing is to learn. Learning and living.
• How you are living now is how you are living your entire life. Tomorrow won’t be any different.
• You are the author of your life. If you don’t like how it goes, write it differently.
• Man is like a canoeist directing his course through waves. One after another he meets them. They may be heavy and powerful or they may be light ruffles of a sunshiny day in midsummer. He must ride them all.
• How noble and good everyone could be if, every evening before falling asleep, they were to recall to mind the events of the whole day and consider exactly what has been good and bad. Then, without realizing it, you try to improve yourself at the start of each new day; of course, you achieve quite a lot in the course of time.
• It doesn’t matter how much money you’re willing to pay on your deathbed, you’re not going to be able to buy back more time.
• Simplicity is an important element in all great art, for it means the removal of all details that are irrelevant to a given purpose. It is one of the arts within the great art of life.
• Be transparent as possible. Stop setting plays. Stop playing chess with life. Make decisions based on love not fear.
• When we eliminate effort, we eliminate life’s pleasures.
• When it’s tough, remember you’ll learn and grow. When it’s really tough, focus on your next step.
• You can’t learn from remembering. You can’t learn from guessing. You can learn only from moving forward at the rate you are moved, as brightness into brightness.
• Systematically remove things from your life to learn if they are actually important.
• The young are truthful, the old kind, the wise both.
• Living a life of integrity pays off, but it takes a very long time.
• You don’t have problems. You have challenges. Simple reframe to prime you to deal with the sh*t of the day.
• When we try to juggle everything, we can’t enjoy anything.
• Being generous is one of the quickest paths to happiness, fulfillment, and satisfaction.
• Whenever I see a person suffering from nervousness, I think, well, what can he expect? If he had not set his sights on things outside man’s control, his nervousness would end at once.
• No use of speed if you are going in the wrong direction. Choose the right strategy for you and move at your own pace. It is the direction and not the speed which decides your success.
• To be a good human being is to have a kind of openness to the world, an ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control.
• Be empty. Let thoughts and sensations flow through you. Don’t cling to anything. Don’t let anything stick to you. Offer no resistance. Let things come, let them go. Remain unconcerned. You have nothing to do with the ever changing movie of life. You’re the ever present witness.
• The more you seek certainty, the more insecure you would be.
• Progress is when you focus more on your dream than reality. Happiness is when you accept reality more than your dreams.
• Seeing your own smallness is called insight. Honoring your own tenderness is called strength.
• We can cultivate a deeper focus, but it must start with a recognition that our time is precious and limited.
• It’s better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing, than a long life spent in a miserable way.
• Learn to stay alone, unfazed, doing nothing. If you can do that daily, you’re indeed a wise man.
• Nothing ever goes as planned – build this into your plans.
• Meaning comes when you take nothing for granted.
• See the world as it is, not as you wish it would be.
• Nothing happens ahead of its time, and what needs to happen always happens.
• Never postpone a good deed which you can do now, because death does not choose whether you have or haven’t done the things you should have done. Death waits for nobody and nothing. It has neither enemies, nor friends.
• If we can advance the knowledge of the world ” if we can do things that expand the scope and scale of consciousness ” then we’re better able to ask the right questions and become more enlightened, and that’s really the only way forward.
• When all of your free time is spent catching up or getting ahead, that’s not free time.
• If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.
• The only limits for tomorrow are the doubts we have today.
• Life doesn’t have a pause button. Life doesn’t have a rewind button. Life doesn’t have a fast-forward button.
• Every day spent half-asleep, living half-heartedly is like a gift left unopened, an absurd waste of your life.
• On your very last day, you’d trade everything you have for another sunny day. Just like the one you take for granted today.
• No one is more dangerously insane than one who is sane all the time: he is like a steel bridge without flexibility, and the order of his life is rigid and brittle.
• You are only entitled to the action, never to its fruits.
• We are really alive when we live in non-belief.
• Situations are powerless if you don’t react.
• Be awake enough to see where you are at any given time and how that is beautiful and has poetry inside.
• One day you will wake up and there won’t be any more time to do the things you’ve always wanted. Do it now.
• Living doesn’t cost much, but showing off does.
• Thank God I didn’t have a fast forward button for life, or I’d be dead by now.
• Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches… devote your income and labor to others… re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul.
• I’ve decided I’m going to live this life for some time to come. The freedom and simple beauty is just too good to pass up.
• To be human is to leap toward our highest moral potentialities, only to trip over the foibled actualities of our reflexive patterns. To be a good human is to keep leaping anyway.
• Life is less about how old you are and more about when you decide to live.
• You only get one shot at this thing called life, so why wouldn’t you put your entire being into it to create the best story ever written?
• Your long-term happiness and fulfillment depend on your ability to fulfill your soul’s unique purpose and to fill the place in the world that only you can fill, making the contribution that only you can make.
• You’re better off making the best of your life rather than trying to fix society.
• A life lived according to the words of others is a life of imprisonment.
• You can only go with loves in this life.
• To leave the world richer ” that is the ultimate success.
• Your story is what you have, what you will always have. It is something to own.
• Do what you have to do. In the meantime, accept what is.
• You are only as mentally tough as your life demands you to be. An easy life fashions a mind that can only handle ease. A challenging life builds a mind that can handle challenge. Like a muscle that atrophies without use, mental strength fades unless it is tested. When life doesn’t challenge you, challenge yourself.
• Do you know what the best moment of your life is? The very moment you are living right now. Because this is the only moment you truly have, all other moments are imaginary. Give it all to every moment you live. Don’t save it for some other time because there is no other time.
• Make space for more life, not more stuff.
• Never regret anything that made you smile.
• See life as a game, but don’t keep a scoreboard.
• None of us know what will happen. Don’t spend time worrying about it. Make the most beautiful thing you can. Try to do that every day. That’s it.
• Don’t be afraid to be an idealist.
• Change the world by being yourself.
• Fate shuffles the cards and we play.
• Your urge to control life controls you.
• Whatever you do, do it well.
• Stay the course with courage.
• Trust the timing of your life.
• Let your life unfold naturally.
• Don’t practice things that you do not want to become.
• Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.
• Take fun seriously.
• Life is for service.
• Every day, you have the power to choose our better history ” by opening your hearts and minds, by speaking up for what you know is right.
• Do we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be?
• The only happy people I know are the ones who are working well at something they consider important.
• Tone your wants and tastes low down enough, and make much of negatives, and of mere daylight and the skies.
• We are here on earth to live, grow up and do what we can to make this world a better place for all people to enjoy freedom.
• Be here now. Be in the moment. The now is the greatest moment of our lives and it just keeps getting better. The bad parts the boring parts the parts with high anxiety. Embrace every moment for its greatness. This is life. This is the greatest movie we will ever see.
• Success must include two things: the development of an individual to his utmost potentiality and a contribution of some kind to one’s world.
• Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die; and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life.
• Forging a new path is far more satisfying than following a map will ever be.
• To know precisely what you want is one of the great treasures in life.
• Build a life. Don’t live one, build one.
• In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity.
• Leave something of sweetness and substance in the mouth of the world.
• Don’t mind what they think. Just do your own thing, at your own pace, in your own style.
• No one owes you anything. No one cares if you fail. No one is coming to save you.
• The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today… The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.
• There is no destination. This is life, this moment. Savor and appreciate it.
• People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive… so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.
• Where you spend your attention is where you spend your life.
• Each day, make sure to do something that is your idea of bliss.
• Be a good steward of your gifts. Protect your time. Feed your inner life. Avoid too much noise. Read good books, have good sentences in your ears. Be by yourself as often as you can. Walk.
• Most of us have spent our lives caught up in plans, expectations, ambitions for the future; in regrets, guilt or shame about the past. To come into the present is to stop the war.
• To be nobody-but-yourself ” in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else ” means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight.
• I saw that it was the artificial needs of life that made me a slave; the real needs of life were few.
• If you are always getting ready for the next thing, how will you ever enjoy this thing?
• Life is simple, but not easy. The problem is we want life to be easy, which makes it complicated.
• Don’t worry about death, pay attention, read a lot, give up control, embrace imperfection.
• It’s the small habits, how you spend your morning, how you talk to yourself, what you read, what you watch, who you share your energy with, that will change your life.
• Don’t rush through your life. Spend time appreciating right where you are.
• To investigate and analyze, with understanding and logic, the principles we ought to live by. Not to display anger or other emotions. To be free of passion and yet full of love.
• Avoid the false path. A false path in life is generally something we are attracted to for the wrong reasons ” money, fame, attention, and so on.
• A busy life seemingly chooses us, but we get to intentionally choose a full life by identifying what matters and getting rid of what doesn’t.
• Only give a fuck about what is true and important.
• Life is not a competition, it’s a game. It’s not about winning or losing, it’s about all the fun we can have before it ends.
• One day you will realize that material things mean nothing. All that matters is the well-being and happiness of the people you love in your life.
• The certainty you’re craving makes you suffer more than the uncertainty you’re avoiding.
• Live your life as you see fit. That’s not selfish. Selfish is to demand that others live their lives as you see fit.
• The greatest use of life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.
• With whatever you’re doing in life… if you know it’s true, if you know it’s real, you have to do it… That’s where the magic is.
• For better or worse, what you allow will continue.
• Our purpose here is to wake up to the truth of who we are and all of the truth around us.
• Peace is possible, lasting happiness is not. Once you realize that, you stop seeking and you finally relax.
• Your life can change if you do the hard thing, make the hard decision, have the hard conversation, have total honesty. Avoid contours and go straight to the point.