It’s rare to come across a quote that can instantly shift my perspective, but when I do, I feel compelled to share it widely. I found this one in issue #209 of Down the Rabbit Hole, a favorite newsletter of mine, and it is attributed to psychologist Carl Rogers from his book “A Way of Being” : 

“One of the most satisfying feelings I know — and also one of the most growth-promoting experiences for the other person — comes from my appreciating this individual in the same way that I appreciate a sunset.  People are just as wonderful as sunsets if I can let them be.  In fact, perhaps the reason we can truly appreciate a sunset is that we cannot control it.  When I look at a sunset as I did the other evening, I don’t find myself saying, ‘Soften the orange a little on the right hand corner, and put a bit more purple along the base, and use a little more pink in the cloud color.’  I don’t do that.  I don’t try to control a sunset.  I watch it with awe as it unfolds.  I like myself best when I can appreciate my staff member, my son, my daughter, my grandchildren, in this same way.”

— Carl Rogers

—CD

Here are four quotes from science fiction books, stories, and movies:

• “There are few better ways to get to know how a species thinks than to learn their art.” — Becky Chambers, A Closed and Common Orbit, 2016 novel

• “Hope clouds observation.” — Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965 novel

• “We’re only different from the bacteria because we are able to ask what the hell this is all about. Not answer, just ask.”  — Carolyn Ives, “Umbernight,” 2018 short story

• The mind is a strange and wonderful thing. I'm not sure it'll ever be able to figure itself out. Everything else maybe, from the atom to the universe, everything except itself. — Daniel Mainwaring, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 1956 film

If you find these worthwhile, you can read 997 more in Guy P. Harrison's new book, Damn You, Entropy!: 1,001 of the Greatest Science Fiction Quotes. — MF 

• “Today is the worst AI will ever be.” — Alex Irpan

• “There are two kinds of people in the world… and who is not both of them?” — James Richardson

• “To understand recursion, one must first understand recursion.”  — Stephen Hawking

• “When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story. When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.”  — Stephen King

• “There is no failure in sports.”  — Giannis Antetokounmpo

• “Scarcity is the one thing you can never have enough of.” — Marc Randolph

• “I wouldn’t have seen it, if I didn’t believe it.” — Marshall McLuhan

• “No man was ever wise by chance.” — Seneca

• "What people say about you behind your back is none of your business." — John Maeda

• “The most selfish act of all is kindness, because its reward is so much greater than the investment.” — Tom Peters

• "The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are." — Carl Jung

That is another set of quotes I greatly appreciate, and find useful to remember. — KK

A collection of quotes I’ve come across in the last few months that I’m still thinking about. — CD

• Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. — Daniel Burnham

• Patience is not passive, on the contrary, it is concentrated strength. ― Bruce Lee

• To attract something that you want, become as joyful as you think that thing would make you. — Martha Beck

• Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are. — Chinese proverb

• If we could see the whole truth of any situation, our only response would be one of compassion.” — Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

A few quotations I’ve recently come across:

“So what’s the Original Sin of the Internet? Nearly all business models it supports require spying on consumers and monetizing them.” — Bob Sullivan

“Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.” — André Gid

“I always thought burnout happened when you work too much. Now I get it. It’s investing emotionally and then not getting a return on that investment.” — @spamap

“When a person I don’t really know or have a regular relationship with reaches out on email or in the DMs, wanting to hang out or has an ask of me and I do not have the time or desire, I have started simply… not responding at all. This feels like next-level boundary setting (and next level guilty and selfish, which I am practicing sitting with). Beforehand, I was at the stage where I could say no, but I would have a lot of excuses and wordiness about it. Now, it’s just, delete”. — Catherine Andrews

“Twitter is so low-friction it might as well be lubricated: You can create an account and accidentally get the entire nation of Malaysia angry at you within 20 minutes.” — Max Read

— MF

Here are some of the recent beautiful quotes and metaphors and advice I’ve been collecting:

• “The fragrance of flowers is their prayer.” — Bulgarian philosopher Peter Deunov

• “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 our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.” — Joseph Campbell, h/t Down The Rabbit Hole

• “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” – Lao Tzu, h/t Dense Discovery

• “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.” — Dutch Theosophist Jacobus Johannes van der Leeuw

• “When stumped by a life choice, choose “enlargement” over happiness.” — Oliver Burkeman, h/t The Mental Health Update

Some recent quotes I keep returning to. — KK

• Things that never happened before happen all the time. — Scott Sagan

• Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you. — Anne Lamott

• To get people to build a boat you don’t need to get them to weave canvas, forge nails, or read the sky. You need to give them a shared yearning for the sea. — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

• A foreign accent is a sign of bravery. — Amy Chua

• We don’t travel to move. We travel to be moved. — Pico Iyer

• Believe those who seek the truth, doubt those who find it. — André Gide

• It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious. — Alfred North Whitehead

• The invention of the ship was also the invention of the shipwreck. — Paul Virilio

• This present moment used to be the unimaginable future. — Stewart Brand

Here is a curated list of Joseph Campbell quotes meant to pump you up before heading out on your own hero’s journey. Here are my favorites:

• “The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.”

• “When you find a writer who really is saying something to you, read everything that writer has written and you will get more education and depth of understanding out of that than reading a scrap here and a scrap there and elsewhere. Then go to people who influenced that writer, or those who were related to him, and your world builds together in an organic way that is really marvelous.”

• “If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.”

• “We’re in a freefall into future. We don’t know where we’re going. Things are changing so fast, and always when you’re going through a long tunnel, anxiety comes along. And all you have to do to transform your hell into a paradise is to turn your fall into a voluntary act. It’s a very interesting shift of perspective and that’s all it is… joyful participation in the sorrows and everything changes.”

— CD

Below are some bits of wisdom I’ve found on blogs and newsletters over the last few months. — CD

On being true to yourself: “Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.” — Anne Rice [via The Magnet]

On finding inspiration everywhere: “I heard once about a Yiddish poet who lived in utter poverty and misery, a teenager, who never had seen anything beautiful in his life, and he made splendid poems about vegetables jumping into the soup pot. My idea being that for the sublime and the beautiful and the interesting, you don’t have to look far away. You have to know how to see.” — Hedda Sterne [via Austin Kleon]

On identity: “Some people have a lot farther to go from where they begin to get where they want to be—a long way up the mountain, and that is how it has been for me. I don’t feel I am getting older; I feel I am getting closer.” — D.H. Lawrence [via Wellness Wisdom]

On transforming your life: "I’ve never seen any life transformation that didn’t begin with the person in question finally getting tired of their own bullshit.” — Elizabeth Gilbert [via Sloww Sunday]

This past year I collected a set of quotes I like to ponder. — KK

• If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. — Robin Jones Gunn

• A foreign accent is a sign of bravery. — Amy Chua

• To know what you’re going to draw, you have to begin drawing. — Picasso

• The reward for good work is more work. — Tom Sachs

• The invention of the ship was also the invention of the shipwreck. — Paul Virilio

• If all I’d ever wanted to do was make money, I’d probably be really poor by now. — Brian Eno

• Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. — Rumi

• On average, bad things happen fast and good things happen slow. — Stewart Brand

• What I cannot create, I do not understand. — Richard Feynman

• Find out who you are and do it on purpose. — Dolly Parton

On the internet, according to Abraham Lincoln, no one knows you are a dog. But the internet is worthless for checking the veracity of a popular quote. For that job I always head to the totally reliable Quote Investigator. This Sherlock Holmes goes to inordinate lengths, almost a magazine article worth of research, to discover, verify (or dismiss) the source of a quote. His investigations are educational, fun, trustworthy, and completely satisfying. If you have a recurring quote whose source you cannot track down, you can submit it to him. — KK

Author and marketer Ryan Holiday recently posted a list of advice he called “33 Things I Stole From People Smarter Than Me.” They’re all worth reading, but here are a couple of my favorites — MF

• 17. Steve Kamb, the founder of NerdFitness.com, told me that the best and most polite excuse is just to say you have a rule. “I have a rule that I don’t decide on the phone.” “I have a rule that I don’t accept gifts.” “I have a rule that I don’t speak for free anymore.” “I have a rule that I am home for bath time with the kids every night.” People respect rules, and they accept that it’s not you rejecting the offer, request, demand, or opportunity, but the rule allows you no choice.

• 32. The personal finance advisor Ramit Sethi talks about how you can just… not reply to things. It felt rude at first, but then I realized it was ruder to ignore the people I care about to respond to things I didn’t ask for in the first place. Selective ignoring is the key to productivity, I’m afraid.

Just a gathering of advice and ideas that I have come across in the last few months and has stayed with me since. — CD

Zuibun nagaku ikasarete itadaite orimasu ne.

“I have been alive for a very long time, haven’t I?”

Totally impossible to translate, but the nuance is something like: I have been caused to live by the deep conditions of the universe to which I a humbly and deeply grateful. P. Arai calls it the “gratitude tense,” and says the beauty of this grammatical construction is that “there is no finger pointing to a source.” She also says, “It is impossible to feel angry when using this tense.” — Ruth Ozeki (found in the Social Social Distance Club)

“To realize your existence, do the things you know you should do — the duties that echo from deep below. Stop avoiding your life.” — u/TheEmployedMoth1 on Reddit

“When you are making plans, you are actually not making plans but you are creating reality…” — Somewhere on Reddit

“A big secret is that you can bend the world to your will a surprising percentage of the time—most people don’t even try, and just accept that things are the way that they are. … Ask for what you want. You usually won’t get it, and often the rejection will be painful. But when this works, it works surprisingly well.” — Sam Altman, How To Be Successful

Personally I know Kevin to be effortlessly wise and warm and honest, and his way of life is something I’ve strived to copy, so I treasure these 68 bits of unsolicited advice. There are so many sparks of clarity here and great guiding principles to adopt. These are my favorite:

• Pros are just amateurs who know how to gracefully recover from their mistakes.

• A worthy goal for a year is to learn enough about a subject so that you can’t believe how ignorant you were a year earlier.

• The universe is conspiring behind your back to make you a success. This will be much easier to do if you embrace this pronoia.

— CD

These are just a few words of advice that I had saved, which have become much more meaningful to me lately:

• “If all you did was just looked for things to appreciate, you would live a joyously spectacular life.” ― Esther Abraham Hicks

• “Let go or be dragged.” — Zen Proverb

• “Be messy and complicated and afraid and show up anyways.” — Glennon Doyle Melton

• “"No.” is a complete sentence.“ — Unknown

• “If you’re the smartest person in the room you’re in the wrong room.”

• “Never miss a good chance to shut up.”

• “Don’t argue with a stranger unless you’re prepared for them to pull out a gun and shoot you.”

• “Before buying anything expensive online, keep it in your shopping cart for 24 hours. You may end up changing your mind.” 

• “What got you here won’t get you there.”

— MF

Here are a few quotes that are helping me look at life differently. — CD

• “The most courageous decision that you can make each day is to be in a good mood.” — Voltaire

• “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.” — Rainer Maria Rilke

• “A good marriage is one in which each spouse secretly thinks he or she got the better deal, and this is true also of our friendships.” — Anne Lamott

• “Things usually happen around us, not to us.” — Unknown, found on Reddit

• “We suffer more in imagination than in reality.” — Seneca

Below are some insightful excerpts and quotes that I’ve been collecting from newsletters, websites and social media posts. — CD

“Understanding a person’s hunger and responding to it is one of the most potent tools you’ll ever discover for getting through to anyone you meet in business or your personal life.” — Mark Goulston, Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone, (Book Freak Newsletter)

The brilliant Japanese writer Haruki Murakami once wrote, “Always remember that to argue, and win, is to break down the reality of the person you are arguing against. It is painful to lose your reality, so be kind, even if you are right.” — Found on James Clear’s website

“Advice? I don’t have advice. Stop aspiring and start writing. If you’re writing, you’re a writer. Write like you’re a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there’s no chance for a pardon. Write like you’re clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, and you’ve got just one last thing to say, like you’re a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please, for God’s sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves. Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we’re not alone. Write like you have a message from the king. Or don’t. Who knows, maybe you’re one of the lucky ones who doesn’t have to.” — Alan Watts

Five quotes that I’m minding right now — KK:

”The only interesting ideas are heresies” — Susan Sontag

“Technology is the reason we get old enough to complain about technology.” — Gary Kasparov

“Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” — Dwight Eisenhower

“If my work is accepted, I must move on to the point where it is not.” — John Cage

“Remember, you can’t be stuck in traffic; you are the traffic.” — Kevin Slavin

These are five quotes I’ve recently stumbled across, and that stopped me in my tracks. — CD

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” — Anaïs Nin

“Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?” — George Carlin

“You know, the matrix says, ‘Pick an identity and stick with it. Because I want to sell you some beer and shampoo and I need you to stick with what you are so I’ll know how to market it to you.’ Drag is the opposite. Drag says, 'Identity is a joke.’” — RuPaul

“Each moment is a place you’ve never been.” — Mark Strand

“You’re under no obligation to be the same person you were 5 minutes ago.” — Alan Watts