The more hours per day you spend doing what you're good at, the less stressed you feel and the more you laugh, smile, and feel you're being treated with respect.
—Gallup, Barking Up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science behind why everything you know about success is (mostly) wrong
Ryan Holiday, The 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living
How rotten and fraudulent when people say they intend to 'give it to you straight.' What are you up to, dear friend? It shouldn't need your announcement, but be readily seen, as if written on your forehead, heard in the ring of your voice, a flash in your eyes — just as the beloved sees it all in the lover's glance. In short, the straightforward and good person should be like a smelly goat — you know when they are in the room with you. — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 11.15
Ganesha went outdoors one day to play and found a stray cat. Too small to know better, he began to pull her ears and tail. He roughed up that poor cat and even began to beat her with a stick, making marks on her head till, yowling, she ran for her life. Some hours later Ganesha went into the house. His mother, to his astonishment and dismay, was looking terrible. Her hair was a mess, she had scratches on her face and she limped from the bruises on her body.
Ryan Holiday, The 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living
Leave the past behind, let the grand design take care of the future, and instead only rightly guide the present to reverence and justice. Reverence so that you'll love what you've been allotted, for nature brought you both to each other. Justice so that you'll speak the truth freely and without evasion, and so that you'll act only as the law and value of things require.— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 12.1
The Late Peter Marshall, an eloquent speaker and for several years the chaplain of the United States Senate, used to love to tell the story of "The Keeper of the Spring," a quiet forest dweller who lived high above an Austrian village along the eastern slopes of the Alps. The old gentleman had been hired many years ago by a young town council to clear away the debris from the pools of water up in the mountain crevices that fed the lovely spring flowing through their town. With faithful, silent regularity, he patrolled the hills, removed the leaves and branches, and wiped away the silt that would otherwise choke and contaminate the fresh flow of water. By and by, the village became a popular attraction for vacationeers. Graceful swans floated along the crystal clear spring, the millwheels of various businesses located near the water turned day and night, farmlands were naturally irrigated, and the view from restaurants was picturesque beyond descriptions.
Keep constant guard over your perceptions, for it is no small thing you are protecting, but your respect, trustworthiness and steadiness, peace of mind, freedom from pain and fear, in a word your freedom. For what would you sell these things?
12 Jesus then began to speak to them in parables: “A man planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a pit for the wine press and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place.2 At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants to collect from them some of the fruit of the vineyard.3 But they seized him, beat him and sent him away empty-handed.4 Then he sent another servant to them; they struck this man on the head and treated him shamefully.5 He sent still another, and that one they killed. He sent many others; some of them they beat, others they killed.
6 “He had one left to send, a son, whom he loved. He sent him last of all,saying, ‘They will respect my son.’
7 “But the tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’8 So they took him and killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard.
9 “What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.10 Haven’t you read this passage of Scripture:
“‘The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; 11 the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?”
12 Then the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders looked for a way to arrest him because they knew he had spoken the parable against them. But they were afraid of the crowd; so they left him and went away.
[Javits Wild] When he was in the country, he always asked the people he chanced to meet what "normal life" was like, because he had forgotten. The answers varied, and he gradually came to realize that, even when he was surrounded by other people, he was absolutely alone in the world. He decided to draw up a list of what constituted normal attitudes and behavior, based on what people did rather than on what they said.
Normal is anything that makes us forget who we are and what we want; that way we can work in order to produce, reproduce, and earn money.
Setting out rules for waging war (the Geneva Convention).
Spending years studying at university only to find at the end of it all that you're unemployable.
