Where is Good? In our reasoned choices. Where is Evil? In our reasoned choices. Where is that which is neither Good nor Evil? In the things outside of our own reasoned choice. —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES,...
When, as the football coach Bill Walsh explained, self-confidence becomes arrogance, assertiveness becomes obstinacy, and self-assurance becomes reckless abandon. This is the ego, as the writer Cyril...
When you’re at your wit’s end, straining and straining with all your might, when people tell you you look like you might pop a vein . . . Take a step back, then go around the problem. Find some levera...
When you have a goal, obstacles are actually teaching you how to get where you want to go—carving you a path. The Things which hurt, Benjamin Franklin wrote, instruct.
When we aim high, pressure and stress obligingly come along for the ride. Stuff is going to happen that catches us off guard, threatens or scares us. Surprises (unpleasant ones, mostly) are almost gua...
When personal gossip attains the dignity of print, and crowds the space available for matters of real interest to the community, future Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis wrote in the Harvard Law Re...
When jarred, unavoidably, by circumstance revert at once to yourself and don’t lose the rhythm more than you can help. You’ll have a better grasp of harmony if you keep going back to it. —MARCUS AUREL...
When children stick their hand down a narrow goody jar they can’t get their full fist out and start crying. Drop a few treats and you will get it out! Curb your desire—don’t set your heart on so many...
What you must do is learn how to press forward precisely when everyone around you sees disaster. It
What such a man needs is not courage but nerve control, cool headedness. This he can get only by practice. —THEODORE ROOSEVELT
What principles? Those to do with good and evil, indeed in the belief that there is no good for a human being except what creates justice, self-control, courage and freedom, and nothing evil except wh...
What matters most is not what these obstacles are but how we see them, how we react to them, and whether we keep our composure.
What matters is that you learn how to manage yourself and others, before your industry eats you alive. Micromanagers are egotists who can’t manage others and they quickly get overloaded. So do the cha...
What humans require in our ascent is purpose and realism. Purpose, you could say, is like passion with boundaries. Realism is detachment and perspective.
What happened yesterday—what happened five minutes ago—is the past. We can reignite and restart whenever we like. Why not do it right now?
We’re not trying to ace tests or impress teachers. We are reading and studying to live, to be good human beings—always and forever.
We’re all just humans, doing the best we can. We’re all just trying to survive, and in the process, inch the world forward a little bit.
Were you to live three thousand years, or even a countless multiple of that, keep in mind that no one ever loses a life other than the one they are living, and no one ever lives a life other than the...
Welcome to the power of perception. Applicable in each and every situation, impossible to obstruct. It can only be relinquished.
We tell ourselves that we need the right setup before we finally buckle down and get serious. Or we tell ourselves that some vacation or time alone will be good for a relationship or an ailment. This...