Quotes
I think a mature Christian is someone who is very difficult to offend.
Dallas Willard
Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition. A modern stoic knows that the surest way to discipline passion is to discipline time: decide what you want or ought to do during the day, then always do it at exactly the same moment every day, and passion will give you no trouble.
W. H. Auden
Bad times! Troublesome times! This men are saying. Let our lives be good; and the times are good. We make our times; such as we are, such are the times.
St. Augustine
If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.
Jean-Paul Sartre
The most intelligent men, like the strongest, find their happiness where others would find only disaster: in the labyrinth, in being hard with themselves and with others, in effort; their delight is in self-mastery; in them asceticism becomes second nature, a necessity, an instinct. They regard a difficult task as a privilege; it is to them a recreation to play with burdens that would crush all others.
Friedrich Nietzsche
I choose to live by choice, not by chance; to make changes, not excuses; to be motivated, not manipulated; to be useful, not used; to excel, not to compete. I choose self-esteem, not self-pity. I choose to listen to my inner voice, not the random opinion of others. I choose to be me.
Miranda Marrott
It's not who's good, it's who's left.
Chris Haueter
The cycle of learning has no ceiling. In the right tunnel, you'll never hit bottom.
Greg Walsh
It's not how much you know that counts, but how much you can recall under stress.
John Danaher
Opportunities multiply as they are seized.
Sun Tzu
The chief utility of history for the analysis of present and future lies in its ability, not to point out lessons, but to isolate things that need thinking about...History provides insights and questions, not answers.
Geoffrey Till
No such thing as spare time, no such thing as free time, no such thing as down time. All you got is life time. Go.
Henry Rollins
You simply cannot progress and look good at the same time. Get over it.
Mark Twight
Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention to arrive safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming: Wow!! What a ride!
Hunter S. Thompson
Melius esse quam videri // It's better to be, than to seem to be
Getting mad at myself for what I do wrong doesn't teach me what I could do right.
Mark Twight
The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.
C.S. Lewis
If you find yourself in a fair fight, you didn't plan your mission properly.
Col. David Hackworth
...your life bends toward what you accept.
James Clear
The best ability is availability.
Raja Bell
Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Experience only teaches the teachable.
Aldous Huxley
Always be delegating tactics and working on strategy.
Wynn Netherland
In every life, no matter how full or empty one's purse, there is tragedy. It is the one promise life always fulfills. Thus, happiness is a gift and the trick is not to expect it but to delight in it when it comes and to add to other people's store of it.
Charles Dickens
When I am in the cellar of affliction, I look for the Lord's choicest wines.
Samuel Rutherford
Kill it before it dies.
Chris Bunting
There is nothing like a good shock of pain for dissolving certain kinds of magic.
C.S. Lewis
Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts.
Wendell Berry
...humiliation is a result of the stories we have told ourselves, unwanted truth slapped across what we deem as reality...
Michael Blevins
The simpler the life, the better. We need only the blessing of God, the benefit of books, and the benevolence of friends.
Thomas Chalmers
Leading without authority is a geek's superpower.
Wynn Netherland
If you're so good, why aren't you winning?
Jocko Willink
Your authority isn't grounded in your expertise. It's grounded in your give-a-darn.
Wynn Netherland
Among men who rise to fame and leadership two types are recognizable - those who are born with a belief in themselves and those in whom it is a slow growth dependent on actual achievement. To men of the last type their own success is a constant surprise, and its fruits the more delicious, yet to be tested cautiously with a haunting sense of doubt whether it is not all a dream. In that doubt lies true modesty, not the sham of insincere self-depreciation but the modesty of "moderation", in the Greek sense.
B.H. Liddell Hart
A kind of second childhood falls on so many men. They trade their violence for the promise of a small increase of life span. In effect, the head of the house becomes the youngest child. And I have searched myself for this possibility with a kind of horror. For I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I've lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment. I did not want to surrender fierceness for a small gain in yardage. My wife married a man; I saw no reason why she should inherit a baby.
John Steinbeck
When you're on the battlefield with your guts spilling out and your legs blown off, it's too late to second guess the wisdom of playing catch with land mines.
Scott Bellware
A decision that was made without an objective or rigorous decision making process is not required to be un-made with a decision making process that is more rigorous than the original.
Anonymous
Nothing very, very good and nothing very, very bad ever lasts for very very long.
Douglas Coupland
It doesn't matter how hard you work on something. What counts is finishing and having it work.
Ken Holberger
You don't need a parachute to go skydiving. You need a parachute to go skydiving twice.
If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.
Aldo Leopold
The way to stay on schedule is to make another one.
Ed Rasala
The three essential functions of problem solving leaders: 1) defining the problem, 2) managing the flow of ideas, 3) controlling the quality.
Gerald Weinberg
The first rule of handling conflict is don't hang around people who are constantly engaging in conflict.
Naval Ravikant
People spend too much time doing and not enough time thinking about what they should be doing.
Naval Ravikant
Faith does not promise us length of days, riches and honors (the Lord not having been pleased that any of these should be appointed us); but is contented with the assurance, that however poor we may be in regard to present comforts, God will never fail us.
The Institutues of the Christian Religion, by John Calvin
Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.
Unknown origin
What would happen if I only said things I deeply believed to be true?
Jordan Peterson
Let us therefore hold, that our life will be framed in best accordance with the will of God…when it is, in every respect, most advantageous to our brethren. But in the whole Law, there is not one syllable which lays down a rule as to what man is to do or avoid for the advantage of his own carnal nature. And, indeed, since men are naturally prone to excessive self-love, which they always retain, how great soever their departure from the truth may be, there was no need of a law to inflame a love already existing in excess. Hence it is perfectly plain, that the observance of the Commandments consists not in the love of ourselves, but in the love of God and our neighbour; and that he leads the best and holiest life who as little as may be studies and lives for himself; and that none lives worse and more unrighteously than he who studies and lives only for himself, and seeks and thinks only of his own.
The Institutues of the Christian Religion, by John Calvin
If my busyness results in prayerlessness then all my activity is for naught.
Thomas Chalmers
...God is never weary in doing good, and in loading us with new gifts.
The Institutues of the Christian Religion, by John Calvin
It is in our power to have no opinion about a thing, and not to be disturbed in our soul; for things themselves have no natural power to form our judgments.
Meditations (6.52), by Marcus Aurelius
...the whole strength of the godly consists in the grace of God...
The Institutues of the Christian Religion, by John Calvin
O Thou who seest and knowest all things, give me grace, I pray Thee, so to know Thee and so to see Thee that in knowing Thee I may know myself even as I am most perfectly known of Thee, and in seeing Thee may see myself as I verily am before Thee. Give me to-day some clear vision of my life in time as it appears to Thine eternity. Show me my own smallness and Thine infinite greatness. Show me my own sin and Thy perfect righteousness. Show me my own lovelessness and Thine exceeding love. Yet in Thy mercy show me also how, small as I am, I can take refuge in Thy greatness; how, sinful as I am, I may lean upon Thy righteousness; and how, loveless as I am, I may hide myself in Thy forgiving love. Cause my thoughts to dwell much to-day on the life and death of Jesus Christ my Lord, so that I may see all things in the light of the redemption which Thou hast granted to me in His name. Amen.
A Diary of Private Prayer, by John Baillie
Don't go there until you need to go there.
Steve Magness
The most resolute opposition to changes in any system usually comes from those who control them.
S.L.A. Marshal
For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.
Viktor E. Frankl
Seeking approval for how far one has come is a seductive trap that shifts attention backwards while the goal remains ahead.
Mark Twight
I wish to testify that in my best moments I am not aware of the existence of the government. Though I respect and feel myself dignified by the principles of the Declaration and the Constitution, I do not remember a day when the thought of the government made me happy, and I never think of it without the wish that it might become wiser and truer and smaller than it is.
Wendell Berry
Faith is not only not opposed to reason, but constitutes it's possibility, it's connection to reality.
Gerhard von Rad
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
H.L. Mencken
Drink your wine. Laugh from your gut. Burden your moments with thankfulness. Be as empty as you can be when that clock winds down. Spend your life. And if time is a river, may you leave a wake.
Death By Living, by N.D. Wilson
We will vanish. We cannot smuggle things out with us through death. But this shouldn't inspire melancholy; it should only tinge the sweet with the bitter. Don't resent the moments simply because they cannot be frozen. Taste them. Savor them. Give thanks for that daily bread. Manna doesn't keep overnight. More will come in the morning.
Death By Living, by N.D. Wilson
That yearning, that groaning against the curse, that desire to feel all that can be felt in a given moment...
Death By Living, by N.D. Wilson
But humans are not intended for data storage (though we have that capacity). We are intended for living, for moving through a story.
Death By Living, by N.D. Wilson
Gentlemen, we will chase perfection, and we will chase it relentlessly, knowing all the while we can never attain it. But along the way, we shall catch excellence.
Vince Lombardi
A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.
Greek Proverb
Remember that all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful.
George E. P. Box
The objective is the journey, the process; the work matters. In a race you can be first, miles and miles ahead of anyone else, and then, metres from the line, fall over. And? Are you going to write that race off? You ran brilliantly. And it's far more complex than saying: win, good; don't win, bad. What enriches you is the game, not the result. The result is a piece of data. The birth rate goes up. Is that enriching? No. But the process that led to that? Now that's enriching. Fulfilment comes from the process. You debate the game not the results. Results are not debatable, they are. Do you buy a paper on a Monday morning for a euro and the only thing in it is list after list of results? Do you go into a football stadium, in the last minute of a game, have a look at the scoreboard and leave? You watch 90 minutes, which is the process. You can't validate the process through the results. Human beings tend to venerate what finished well, not what was done well. We attack what ended up badly, not what was done badly.
Juanma Lillo
If you trust in yourself...and believe in your dreams...and follow your star...you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.
Terry Pratchett
Memories and hope are not so different; one is "having done" the other is "to do." Neither constitutes action. You are what you do; thus, if you do nothing, you are nobody. If you once did great things, you think you are great. You coast along on dead, preserved laurels, lifeless and wasting away.
Mark Twight
Therefore, be patient. Such pleasure as there is, is here, now. Take pleasure as it comes. Take work as it comes. The end may never come, or when it does it may be the wrong end.
Wendell Berry
Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions.
Epictetus
You can't ever lose control, not when you are dealing with 30 top professionals who are all millionaires. And if anyone steps out of my control, that's them dead.
Sir Alex Ferguson
Aggressively find ways to use things.
Matt Reiferson
Initially you have to choose between building something lots of people like a little bit, or something a few people like a lot. Choose the latter.
Paul Graham
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Hanlon's Razor
Your product is only a tool which lets users become awesome. Don't be engulfed by the product's awesomeness, however awesome it may be. So while you should hack your way to a great product, you should hustle your way to getting customers and users - and that is what makes a business successful.
Andy Croll
Show them the meal, not the scraps in the kitchen.
Brad Hertzog
Don't spend much time listening to someone talk about something they have never done.
As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I don't care about what I climb, only how it affects me. Success merely punctuates the experience.
Mark Twight
It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.
J.R.R. Tolkien - "The Lord Of The Rings: The Return of The King - Book V - The Last Debate"
In the torment of the insufficiency of everything attainable, we eventually learn that here, in this life, all symphonies remain unfinished.
Karl Rahner
I too shall lie in the dust when I am dead, but now let me win noble renown.
Homer, Illiad 18
Mistakes happen. Character is revealed by how you handle them.
Bad call, great apology (37signals)
For the whole earth is the tomb of famous men; not only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions in their own country, but in foreign lands there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them, graven not on stone but in the hearts of men.
Pericles' Funeral Oration
We're always creating the preconditions of our own future. At some times more deliberately than others.
Joshua Schachter
You will be civilized the day you can spend time doing nothing, learning nothing, and improving nothing, without feeling slightest guilt.
Nicholas Nassim Taleb
Culture is, first of all, the name for all of our relentless, restless human effort to take the world as its given to us and make something else. This is the original insight of the writer of Genesis when he says that human beings were made in God's image: just like the original Creator, we are creators.
Andy Crouch
Feeble emotions, it seemed to me, corresponded to flaccid muscles, sentimentality to a sagging stomach, and over-impressionability to an oversensitive, white skin. Bulging muscles, a taut stomach, and a tough skin, I reasoned, would correspond respectively to an intrepid fighting spirit, the power of dispassionate intellectual judgment, and a robust disposition.
Yukio Mishima
Now in particular I ask you to pray with me that as I baptize this child with water and receive him into the number of Christians, that God himself inwardly baptize him with his Spirit and hold him in the number of his elect.
John Oecolampadius
There are two attitudes of mind, especially, that the older man must guard against. The one is - living in the past: his accomplishments of yesteryear: fantasies as to his boyhood: his athletic or sporting successes: his high-marked examinations. To do this is to admit failure as to the present.
In this age group there are still 'championships' to be won: feats of strength even outdoing the young: capacities and demonstrations just as good as he ever enjoyed, since all things are relative.
The other is - projecting himself too much into the future: sacrificing today for a perhaps, nebulous, tomorrow. There must be balance.
Percy Cerutty
What are fathers called to? Fathers give. Fathers protect. Fathers bestow. Fathers yearn and long for the good of their children. Fathers delight. Fathers sacrifice. Fathers are jovial and open-handed. Fathers create abundance, and if lean times come they take the leanest portion themselves and create a sense of gratitude and abundance for the rest. Fathers love birthdays and Christmas because it provides them with yet another excuse to give some more to the kids. When fathers say no, as good fathers do from time to time, it is only because they are giving a more subtle gift, one that is a bit more complicated than a cookie. They must include among their gifts things like self-control and discipline and a work ethic, but they are giving these things, not taking something else away just for the sake of taking. Fathers are not looking for excuses to say no. Their default mode is not no.
Doug Wilson
When he loses he always finds an excuse. But football is not possession on the ball or playing nice passes. Good football is winning games and that's what we do when we play against them.
Michael Ballack, after Chelsea clinically dispatched Arsenal 2-0
The one essential condition of human existence is that man should always be able to bow down before something infinitely great. If men are deprived of the infinitely great, they will not go on living and will die of despair. The Infinite and the Eternal are as essential for man as the little planet on which he dwells.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Before the time trial this past weekend one of my old team-mates dads asked me how I felt. I said "I am ready to bleed to win this thing"
Sam Krieg
The big problem is not that unhappy people have less money than others. It is that they have earned less success.
Arthur C. Brooks
Sprezzatura...a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it.
Wikipedia
Bruce had me up to three miles a day, really at a good pace. We'd run the three miles in twenty-one or twenty-two minutes. Just under eight minutes a mile [Note: when running on his own in 1968, Lee would get his time down to six-and-a half minutes per mile]. So this morning he said to me "We're going to go five." I said, Bruce, I can't go five. I'm a helluva lot older than you are, and I can't do five." He said, "When we get to three, we'll shift gears and it's only two more and you'll do it." I said "Okay, hell, I'll go for it." So we get to three, we go into the fourth mile and I'm okay for three or four minutes, and then I really begin to give out. I'm tired, my heart's pounding, I can't go any more and so I say to him, "Bruce if I run any more," and we're still running- "if I run any more I'm liable to have a heart attack and die." He said, "Then die."" It made me so mad that I went the full five miles. Afterward I went to the shower and then I wanted to talk to him about it. I said, you know, "Why did you say that?"" He said, "Because you might as well be dead. Seriously, if you always put limits on what you can do, physical or anything else, it'll spread over into the rest of your life. It'll spread into your work, into your morality, into your entire being. There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level."
Don't know if this story about Bruce Lee is true or not, but I believe it
In a lot of ways the code wasn't very good because it was done very fast. But it got the job done. We shipped - that was the bottom line.
Jamie Zawinski, in Coders At Work
In general, I enjoy reading and talking about the Apes movies more than I enjoy experiencing them.
Chuck Klosterman. Lots of things in life are like this.
I spoke only strong words and ignored weakness at every turn. I subdued my fears. I was opinionated and direct. I became a man either well loved or truly hated. I was ready for anything.
Mark Twight, Kiss Or Kill
remember that quitting will not make the pain go away, the damage is done, so you might as well finish what you started
Station 515
This world though is based on illusion and it is easy for the individual whose job is pretending to convince himself that if he is faking then everyone is faking and that no one else has done anything genuine, that nothing is true. For that fellow hard work is not the answer: the shortcut is the answer, the way if life: "If I wear the clothes and say the words I will be the guy." It is hard to earn such a man's respect because he has none for himself, and knows deep down the illusion of his self-respect is just that.
Mark Twight
What I am doing right here, right now is either taking me closer to my goal or pushing me further from it. Ask which it is. Answer honestly. And then ACT on that answer.
Mark Twight
If you need advice on how to hold a bat, you aren't ready for the majors.
Bill Brandt
When therefore we are hindered, or disturbed, or grieved, let us never attribute it to others, but to ourselves; that is, to our own principles. An uninstructed person will lay the fault of his own bad condition upon others. Someone just starting instruction will lay the fault on himself. Some who is perfectly instructed will place blame neither on others nor on himself.
Epictetus