We Know You Will Go Far
21 Quotes That (If Practical) Change You Into a Ameliorate Person
As long as human has been alive, he has been collecting little sayings about how to live. We notice them carved in the rock of the Temple of Apollo and etched as graffiti on the walls of Pompeii. They announced in the plays of Shakespeare, the commonplace volume of H. P. Lovecraft, the collected proverbs of Erasmus, and the ceiling beams of Montaigne's study. Today, they're recorded on iPhones and in Evernote.
Only whatever generation is doing information technology, whether they're written by scribes in Mainland china or commoners in some European dungeon or merely passed along by a kindly grandfather, these little epigrams of life advice have taught essential lessons. How to respond to adversity. How to recollect near money. How to meditate on our mortality. How to have courage.
And they pack all this in in so few words. "What is an epigram?" Coleridge asked, "A dwarfish whole; Its trunk brevity, and wit its soul." Epigrams are what Churchill was doing when he said: "To improve is to change, then to be perfect is to have changed often." Or Balzac: "All happiness depends on courage and work." Ah yeah, epigrams are often funny too. That'due south how we remember them. Napoleon: "Never interrupt an enemy making a fault." François de La Rochefoucauld: "We hardly find whatsoever persons of expert sense save those who concord with u.s.a.." Voltaire: "A long dispute means that both parties are wrong."
Below are some wonderful epigrams that bridge some 21 centuries and 3 continents. Each i is worth remembering, having queued in your brain for i of life'due south crossroads or to drop at the perfect moment in conversation. Each volition change and evolve with you every bit you evolve (Heraclitus: "No human being steps in the aforementioned river twice") and yet each will remain strong and unyielding no matter how much yous may i solar day endeavor to wiggle out and away from them.
Fundamentally, each ane will teach yous how to be a better person. If y'all permit them.
"Nosotros must all either wearable out or rust out, every ane of us. My choice is to wear out." — Theodore Roosevelt
At the commencement of his life, few would accept predicted that Theodore Roosevelt even had a pick in the matter. He was sickly and fragile, doted on by worried parents. So, a conversation with his father sent him driven, almost maniacally in the other direction. "I will make my body," he said, when told that he would not go far in this world with a bright mind in a frail body. What followed was a montage of boxing, hiking, horseback riding, hunting, angling, pond, boldly charging enemy fire, and and then a grueling work pace equally one of the most prolific and admired presidents in American history. Again, this epigram was prophetic for Roosevelt, considering at only 54 years former, his body began to vesture out. An assassination attempt left a bullet lodged in his body and it hastened his rheumatoid arthritis. On his famous "River of Doubtfulness" expedition he developed a tropical fever and the toxins from an infection in his leg left him nearly expressionless. Back in America he contracted a severe pharynx infection and was later diagnosed with inflammatory rheumatism, which temporarily confined him to a wheelchair (saying famously, "All right! I can work that manner likewise!") and then he died at age 60. Only there is not a person on the planet who would say that he had not fabricated a fair trade, that he had non worn his life well and not lived a full one in those lx years.
"It's not what happens to you, but how yous react to it that matters." — Epictetus
In that location is the story of the alcoholic father with ii sons. One follows in his father's footsteps and ends up struggling through life as a drunk, and the other becomes a successful, sober businessman. Each are asked: "Why are you the mode you are?" The answer for both is the same: "Well, it's because my father was an alcoholic." The same issue, the same babyhood, two unlike outcomes. This is true for almost all situations — what happens to u.s. is an objective reality, how we respond is a subjective choice. The Stoics — of which Epictetus was 1 — would say that we don't control what happens to u.s., all we control are our thoughts and reactions to what happens to us. Call back that: You're divers in this life not by your good luck or your bad luck, only your reaction to those strokes of fortune. Don't let anyone tell you dissimilar.
"The best revenge is not to be like that." — Marcus Aurelius
There is a proverb about revenge: Before setting out for a journey of revenge, dig two graves. Because revenge is so costly, because the pursuit of it frequently wears on the i who covets information technology. Marcus'southward advice is easier and truer: How much amend it feels to let information technology go, to exit the wrongdoer to their wrongdoing. And from what we know, Marcus Aurelius lived this advice. When Avidius Cassius, i of his most trusted generals rebelled and alleged himself emperor, Marcus did non seek vengeance. Instead, he saw this every bit an opportunity to teach the Roman people and the Roman Senate almost how to deal with civil strife in a compassionate, forgiving fashion. Indeed, when assassins struck Cassius down, Marcus supposedly wept. This is very different than the idea of "Living well being the all-time revenge" — it's not about showing someone upwardly or rubbing your success in their face. Information technology'southward that the person who wronged you lot is not happy, is non enjoying their life. Do non become like them. Reward yourself by being the opposite of them.
"There is expert in everything, if only we await for it." — Laura Ingalls Wilder
Laura Ingalls Wilder, writer of the archetype series Lilliputian Business firm, lived this, facing some of the toughest and unwelcoming elements on the planet: harsh and unyielding soil, Indian territory, Kansas prairies, and the boiling weald of Florida. Not afraid, non jaded — because she saw it all as an risk. Everywhere was a chance to do something new, to persevere with cheery pioneer spirit whatever fate befell her and her husband. That isn't to say she saw the world through delusional rose-colored glasses. Instead, she simply chose to see each situation for what it could be — accompanied by hard work and a little upbeat spirit. Others make the contrary option. Call up: There is no adept or bad without usa, in that location is only perception. There is the effect itself and the story we tell ourselves almost what it means.
"Character is fate." — Heraclitus
In the hiring process, most employers expect at where someone went to schoolhouse, what jobs they've held in the past. This is because past success can be an indicator of future successes. But is it ever? There are plenty of people who were successful because of luck. Maybe they got into Oxford or Harvard because of their parents. And what about a immature person who hasn't had fourth dimension to build a track record? Are they worthless? Of course non. This is why character is a far better measure out of a man or woman. Not just for jobs, but for friendships, relationships, for everything. When you seek to accelerate your ain position in life, character is the best lever — mayhap non in the brusque term, but certainly over the long term. And the same goes for the people you lot invite into your life.
"If you encounter fraud and exercise non say fraud, you are a fraud." — Nicholas Nassim Taleb
A man shows up for work at a company where he knows that management is doing something wrong, something unethical. How does he respond? Can he cash his checks in practiced conscience because he isn't the one running up the stock toll, falsifying reports or lying to his co-workers? No. One cannot, as Budd Schulberg says in one of his novels, bargain in filth without condign the thing he touches. Nosotros should expect up to a immature man at Theranos every bit an example here. After discovering numerous issues at the health care startup, he was dismissed by his seniors and eventually contacted the regime. Subsequently, non merely was this immature homo repeatedly threatened, bullied, and attacked past Theranos, but his family unit had to consider selling their firm to pay for the legal bills. His relationship with his grandfather — who sits on the Theranos board — is strained and perhaps irreparable. As Marcus Aurelius reminded himself, and us: "Just that you do the correct thing. The residue doesn't matter." It'due south an important reminder. Doing the right thing isn't costless. Doing the right thing might even cost you everything.
"Every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him." — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Anybody is improve than you at something. This is a fact of life. Someone is better than you at making centre contact. Someone is better than yous at breakthrough physics. Someone is ameliorate informed than you lot on geopolitics. Someone is better than you are at speaking kindly to someone they dislike. There are ameliorate gift-givers, name-rememberers, weight-lifters, atmosphere-controllers, confidence-carriers, and friendship-makers. There is no one person who is the best at all these things, who doesn't have room to improve in ane or more than of them. So if you can discover the humility to accept this about yourself, what y'all will realize is that the world is one giant classroom. Go nearly your day with an openness and a joy nigh this fact. Look at every interaction as an opportunity to learn from and of the people you run across. Y'all will be amazed at how rapidly you lot grow, how much meliorate yous go.
"This is not your responsibility just information technology is your problem." — Cheryl Strayed
It is non your responsibility to fill a stranger's gas tank, but when their auto dies in front of y'all, blocking the road, it's withal your trouble isn't it? It is not your responsibility to negotiate peace treaties on behalf of your country, but when war breaks out and y'all're drafted to fight in it? Guess whose problem it is? Yours. Life is like this. It has a way of dropping things into our lap — the consequences of an employee's negligence, a spouse'southward momentary lapse of sentence, a freak conditions result — that were in no mode our fault merely by nature of existence in our lap, our f*cking problem. So what are you going to practise? Complain? Are you going to litigate this in a blogpost or an argument with God? Or are yous just going to get to piece of work solving it the best you can? Life is defined by how you answer that question. Cheryl Strayed is right. This affair might non exist your responsibility merely it is your problem. So accept information technology, deal with it, kick its ass.
"Waste no more fourth dimension arguing what a good man should exist. Be one." — Marcus Aurelius
In Rome merely as America, in the forum just as on Facebook, there was the temptation to replace activeness with argument. To philosophize instead of living philosophically. Today, in a gild obsessed with content, outrage, and drama, it's even easier to become lost in the echo chamber of the debate of what's "better." We can have endless discussions about what's right and wrong. What should we do in this hypothetical state of affairs or that one? How tin we encourage other people to be better? (We tin can even debate the pregnant of the above line: "What'southward a man? What's the definition of good? Why doesn't it mention women?") Of course, this is all a distraction. If you want to try to brand the earth a slightly amend place, there's a lot you lot tin can do. But but one affair guarantees an impact. Pace abroad from the argument. Dig yourself out of the rubble. Stop wasting time with how things should be, would be, could be. Be that thing. (Here's a cool poster of this quote).
"Y'all are only entitled to the action, never to its fruits." — Bhagavad Gita
In life, it's a fact that: You will be unappreciated. You will be sabotaged. You will experience surprising failures. Your expectations volition not be met. Yous will lose. You volition fail. How do you behave on and so? How do you take pride in yourself and your work? John Wooden'due south advice to his players says it: Modify the definition of success. "Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of cocky satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming." "Ambition," Marcus Aurelius reminded himself, "means tying your well-beingness to what other people say or do . . . Sanity ways tying it to your own deportment." Practise your work. Practice information technology well. Then "permit get and let God." That's all there needs to be. Recognition and rewards — those are just actress.
"Self-sufficiency is the greatest of all wealth." — Epicurus
A lot has been said of so-called "F*ck Y'all Money." The idea being that if one can earn enough, go rich and powerful enough, that suddenly no i tin touch on them and they can do whatever they want. What a mirage this is! How ofttimes the target seems to mysteriously move correct equally we approach it. Information technology calls to mind the ascertainment of David "DHH" Heinemeier Hansson who said that "across a specific amount, f*ck-you money can be a land of mind. 1 that you tin acquire well in advance of the corresponding bank account. I that's founded mostly on a personal confidence that even if most of the fabric trappings went abroad, y'all'd still be happier for standing your basis." The truth is beingness your ain man, being self-contained, having fewer needs, and better, resilient skills that permit you to thrive in any and all situations. That is real wealth and freedom. That'due south what Emerson was talking nigh in his famous essay on cocky-reliance and it'due south what Epicurus meant too.
"Tell me to what you pay attending and I will tell you who you lot are." — Jose Ortega y Gasset
It was one of the great Stoics who said that if you live with a lame man, soon plenty you will walk with a limp. My male parent told me something similar equally a kid: "Yous become like your friends." It is truthful not simply with social influences but informational ones too: If y'all are addicted to the chatter of the news, yous will soon find yourself worried, resentful, and perpetually outraged. If you eat aught merely escapist entertainment, you will find the real globe around you harder and harder to deal with. If all you exercise is watch the markets and captivate over every fluctuation, your worldview will get defined past coin and gains and losses. But if you drink from deep, philosophical wisdom? If y'all accept regularly in your mind role models of restraint, sobriety, courage, and award? Well, yous volition start to go these things too. Tell me who you spend time with, Goethe said, and I will tell yous who yous are. Tell me what you pay attention to, Gasset was maxim, and I can tell you the same thing. Remember that the next time you experience your finger itching to pull upwards your Facebook feed.
"Ameliorate to trip with the feet than with the tongue." — Zeno
You can e'er get up after you fall, but remember, what has been said can never be implied. Especially fell and hurtful things.
"Space I can recover. Time, never." — Napoleon Bonaparte
Lands can be reconquered, indeed in the course of a battle, a hill or a sure manifestly might merchandise hands several times. But missed opportunities? These tin can never be regained. Moments in time, in culture? They can never be re-made. One tin can never go back in time to gear up for what they should have prepared for, no one can ever become back disquisitional seconds that were wasted out of fright or ego. Napoleon was vivid at trading space for time: Certain, you can make these moves, provided you are giving me the time I need to drill my troops, or movement them to where I desire them to be. Yet in life, near of usa are terrible at this. We trade an hour of our life here or afternoon there like information technology can be bought back with the few dollars we were paid for it. And it is but much much later, as they are on their deathbeds or when they are looking back on what might accept been, that many people realize the awful truth of this quote. Don't practice that. Cover information technology now.
"You never know who's pond naked until the tide goes out." — Warren Buffett
The trouble with comparing yourself to other people is y'all really never know anyone else'southward situation. The co-worker with a nice car? Information technology could be a dangerous and unsafe salvage with 100,000 miles. The friend who always seems to exist traveling to far off places? They could be up to their eyeballs in credit card debt and about to get fired by their boss. Your neighbors' spousal relationship which makes you then insecure almost your own? It could exist a nightmare, a complete lie. People practise a very good job pretending at things, and their well-maintained fronts are frequently covers for incredible gamble and irresponsibility. You lot never know, Warren Buffett was maxim, until things become bad. If you're living the life you know to exist correct, if y'all are making good, solid decisions, don't be swayed by what others are doing — whether that is taking the grade of irrational exuberance or panicked pessimism. See the high flying lives of others as a cautionary tale — like Icarus with his wings — and not as an inspiration or a source of insecurity. Continue doing what you're doing and don't be caught swimming naked! Because the tide will become out. Prepare for it! (Premeditatio Malorum)
"Search others for their virtues, thyself for thy vices." — Benjamin Franklin
Marcus Aurelius would say something similar: "Be tolerant with others and strict with yourself." Why? For starters because the only person y'all control is yourself. It's a complete waste of time to go around projecting strict standards on other people — ones they never agreed to follow in the commencement place — and so being aghast or experience wronged when they fall short. The other reason is yous have no idea what other people are going or have been through. That person who seemed to rudely turn down the invitation you so kindly offered? What if they were working difficult to recommit themselves to their family and as much as they'd like to have coffee with y'all, are doing their best to spend more than time with their loved ones? The signal is: You have no idea. So give people the benefit of the uncertainty. Look for good in them, assume skillful in them, and let that good inspire your ain actions.
"The world was not big enough for Alexander the Great, merely a coffin was." — Juvenal
Ah, the way that a good one liner can humble fifty-fifty the world's greatest conqueror. Call up: we are all equals in death. Information technology makes quick piece of work of all of us, large and small. I conduct a money in my pocket to remember this: Memento Mori. What Juvenal reminds the states is the same thing that Shakespeare spoke near in Hamlet:
"Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to dirt,
Might terminate a hole to proceed the wind abroad.
O' that that globe which kept the world in awe
Should patch a wall t' expel the winder'southward flaw!"
It doesn't thing how famous you are, how powerful you lot are, how much you lot call up yous have left to do on this planet, the aforementioned thing happens to all of the states, and information technology can happen when we least expect information technology. And so nosotros will be wormfood and that's the end of information technology.
"To improve is to change, and then to exist perfect is to have inverse often." — Winston Churchill
While this is probably not a Churchill original (he most likely borrowed from Key Newman: "In a higher world it is otherwise, but hither below to alive is to modify, and to be perfect is to have changed frequently"), Churchill certainly abided this in his life. He'd even quip most his constant change of political amalgamation: "I said a lot of stupid things when I worked with the Conservative Party, and I left information technology because I did not want to become on proverb stupid things." Equally Cicero would say when attacked that he was changing his opinion: "If something strikes me as probable, I say it; and that is how, unlike everyone else, I remain a free agent." There is zero more impressive — intellectually or otherwise — than to modify long held beliefs, opinions, and habits. The more yous've inverse, the better y'all probably are.
"Approximate not, lest you exist judged." — Jesus
Not only here would Jesus phone call us on i of our worst tendencies just immediately too ask: "And why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?" This line is similar to what the Stoic philosopher Seneca, who historical sources propose was born the same yr as Jesus, would say: "You look at the pimples of others when you yourselves are covered with a mass of sores." Waste no time judging and worrying about other people. You lot take enough of bug to bargain with in your own life. Chances are your own flaws are probably worse — and in any case, they are at to the lowest degree in your command. So do something about them.
"Fourth dimension and patience are the strongest warriors." — Leo Tolstoy
Tolstoy puts the in a higher place words in the mouth of Field Marshall Mikhail Kutuzov in War and Peace. In real life, Kutuzov gave Napoleon a painful lesson in the truth of the epigram over a long wintertime in Russia in 1812. Tolstoy would also say, "Everything comes in time to him who knows how to look." When information technology comes to accomplishing anything significant, you are required to exhibit patience and fortitude, so much patience, as much equally you'd think you'd need boldness and courage. In my book Conspiracy, nigh Peter Thiel's plot to destroy Gawker, his operative describes a like idea: With enough time and patience, yous tin do anything.
"No one saves us only ourselves / No one tin and no one may." — Buddha
Volition we wait for someone to save usa, or will we listen to Marcus Aurelius's empowering call to "get active in your own rescue — if you care for yourself at all — and do it while you lot can."
Considering at some signal, we must put articles like this one aside and take activity. No one can blow our nose for us. Another blog mail isn't the answer. The correct choices and decisions are. Who knows how much time you take left, or what awaits us tomorrow? So get to information technology.
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This piece originally ran on Art of Manliness.
Source: https://medium.com/thrive-global/21-quotes-that-if-applied-change-boys-into-men-3e124aff36f8
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