“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”
Hillel the Elder
“If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until you can hardly bear to look at it.
A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts it will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.”
Roald Dahl, The Twits
“If you choose philosophy, be prepared from the beginning that many people will ridicule you, will mock you, and will say ‘suddenly he returns to us as a philosopher’ and ‘where does that frown on us come from?’. Don’t frown: but hold on to those things that seem best to you, as you are stationed on this post by God. And remember that if you are persistent in these things, then the people that ridiculed you earlier will admire you later. But if you give in to them, you will receive twice the ridicule.” ~Epictetus
"Watch your thoughts,
they become your words.
Watch your words, they
become your actions. Watch your
actions, they become your habits.
Watch your habits, they become
your character. Watch your
character, it becomes your
destiny.” Lao Tzu
“The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Think only on those things that are in line with your principles and can bear the light of day. The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you do is who you become. Your integrity is your destiny - it is the light that guides your way.”
Heraclitus
“Insofar as we are herd animals, we have within ourselves that essential conflict between the inertia which wants to remain in the flock, and the disturbing factor, the possibility of individuation.”
Marie-Louise von Franz
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime." ― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad / Roughing It
“You are not an isolated entity. You are a unique, irreplaceable part of the cosmos. Don’t forget this. You are an essential piece of the puzzle of humanity”
Epictetus
"Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today."
-Seneca
“You can’t go back & change the beginning, but you can start where you are & change the ending.” C.S. Lewis
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
"All you need are these: certainty of judgment in the present moment; action for the common good in the present moment; and an attitude of gratitude in the present moment for anything that comes your way."
Marcus Aurelius