📚Week 2023-18: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - Collected Quotes

"In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away [...]" (Antoine de Saint Exupéry, "Wind, Sand and Stars", 1939)

"The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them." (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, "Wind, Sand, and Stars", 1939)

"Life always bursts the boundaries of formulas." (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, "Flight to Arras", 1942)

"Man is a knot, a web, a mesh into which relationships are tied. Only those relationships matter." (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, "Flight to Arras", 1942)

"The field of consciousness is tiny. It accepts only one problem at a time. Get into a fist fight, put your mind on the strategy of the fight, and you will not feel the other fellow's punches." (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, "Flight to Arras", 1942)

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye." (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, "The Little Prince", 1943)

"The thing that is important is the thing that is not seen." (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, "The Little Prince", 1943)

"The meaning of things lies not in the things themselves but in our attitude toward them." (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, "Wisdom of the Sands", 1948)

"Your task is not to foresee the future, but to enable it." (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, "Wisdom of the Sands", 1948)

"A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral." (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)

"A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us." (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)

"Freedom and constraint are two aspects of the same necessity, the necessity of being the man you are, and not another. You are free to be that man, but not free to be another."(Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)

"If you want to build a boat, do not instruct the men to saw wood, stitch the sails, prepare the tools and organize the work, but make them long for setting sail and travel to distant lands."(Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)

"It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important." (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)

"Life has a meaning only if one barters it day by day for something other than itself." (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)

"Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit." (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)

"There is no hope or joy except in human relations." (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)

"To be a man is, precisely, to be responsible." (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)

"War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus." (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)

"What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step." (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)

"You become responsible forever for what you have tamed." (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)

"You give birth to that on which you fix your mind." (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)

🧿Week 2022-48: Carlos Castañeda - Collected Quotes

"A man goes to knowledge as he goes to war: wide-awake, with fear, with respect, and with absolute assurance. Going to knowledge or going to war in any other manner is a mistake, and whoever makes it might never live to regret it." (Carlos Castaneda, "The Teachings of Don Juan", 1968)

"Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question... Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't, it is of no use." (Carlos Castaneda, "The Teachings of Don Juan", 1968)

"Only as a warrior can one withstand the path of knowledge. A warrior cannot complain or regret anything. His life is an endless challenge, and challenges cannot possibly be good or bad. Challenges are simply challenges." (Carlos Castaneda, "The Teachings of Don Juan", 1968)

"The most effective way to live is as a warrior. A warrior may worry and think before making any decision, but once he makes it, he goes his way, free from worries or thoughts; there will be a million other decisions still awaiting him. That's the warrior's way." (Carlos Castañeda, "A Separate Reality: Further Conversations with Don Juan", 1971)

"Things don't change. You change your way of looking, that's all." (Carlos Castañeda, "A Separate Reality: Further Conversations with Don Juan", 1971)

"It doesn't matter what one reveals or what one keeps to oneself. Everything we do, everything we are, rests on our personal power. If we don't have enough personal power the most magnificent piece of wisdom can be revealed to us and it won't make a damn bit of difference." (Carlos Castaneda, "Tales of Power", 1974)

"The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge while an ordinary man takes everything as a blessing or a curse." (Carlos Castaneda, "Tales of Power", 1974)

"The world doesn't yield to us directly, the description of the world stands in between. So, properly speaking, we are always one step removed and our experiences of the world is always a recollection of the experience. We are perennially recollecting the instant that has just happened, just passed. Re recollect, recollect, recollect." (Carlos Castaneda, "Tales of Power", 1974)

"The daily world exists because we know how to hold its images; consequently, if one drops the attention needed to maintain those images, the world collapses." (Carlos Castaneda, "Second Ring of Power", 1977)

"To tune the spirit when someone is trampling on you is called control." (Carlos Castaneda, "The Fire from Within", 1984)

"The third point of reference is freedom of perception; it is intent; it is spirit; the somersault of thought into the miraculous; the act of reaching beyond our boundaries and touching the inconceivable." (Carlos Castaneda, "Power of Silence", 1987) 

"Anything is one of a million paths. Therefore, a warrior must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if he feels that he should not follow it, he must not stay with it under any conditions. His decision to keep on that path or to leave it must be free of fear or ambition. He must look at every path closely and deliberately. There is a question that a warrior has to ask, mandatorily: 'Does this path have a heart?'" (Carlos Castaneda, "The Wheel of Time: The Shamans of Mexico Their Thoughts About Life", 1998)

"The internal dialogue is what grounds people in the daily world. The world is such and such or so and so, only because we talk to ourselves about its being such and such and so and so. The passageway into the world of shamans opens up after the warrior has learned to shut off his internal dialogue." (Carlos Castaneda, "The Wheel of Time: The Shamans of Mexico Their Thoughts About Life", 1998)

📚Week 2022-46: Lin Yutang - Collected Quotes

"A good traveler is one who does not know where he is going to, and a perfect traveler does not know where he came from."  (Lin Yutang, "The Importance of Living", 1937)

"After all, only he who handles his ideas lightly is master of his ideas, and only he who is master of his ideas is not enslaved by them. Seriousness, after all, is only a sign of effort, and effort is a sign of imperfect mastery." (Lin Yutang, "The Importance of Living", 1937)

"Now it must be taken for granted that simplicity of life and thought is the highest and sanest ideal for civilization and culture, that when a civilization loses simplicity and the sophisticated do not return to unsophistication, civilization becomes increasingly full of troubles and degenerates. Man then becomes the slave of the ideas, thoughts, ambitions and social systems that are his own product." (Lin Yutang, "The Importance of Living", 1937)

"Peace of mind is that mental condition in which you have accepted the worst." (Lin Yutang, "The Importance of Living", 1937)

"Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials." (Lin Yutang)

"Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence." (Lin Yutang)

"No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow." (Lin Yutang)

"Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do, than what one can do." (Lin Yutang)

"This I conceive to be the chemical function of humor: to change the character of our thought." (Lin Yutang)

📚Week 2022-31: Benjamin Disraeli - Collected Quotes

 "It is remarkable that when great discoveries are effected, their simplicity always seems to detract from their originality: on these occasions we are reminded of the egg of Columbus!" (Benjamin Disraeli, "Curiosities of Literature" Vol. 3, 1824)

"Knowledge must be gained by ourselves. Mankind may supply us with facts; but the results, even if they agree with previous ones, must be the work of our own minds." (Benjamin Disraeli, "The Young Duke", 1831)

"Nature is more powerful than education; time will develop everything." (Benjamin Disraeli, "Contarini Fleming", 1832)

"What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens." (Benjamin Disraeli, "Henrietta Temple", 1837)

"Extreme views are never just; something always turns up which disturbs the calculations formed upon their data." (Benjamin Disraeli, 1847)

"As a general rule the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information." (Benjamin Disraeli, "Endymion", 1880)

"Imagination is too often accompanied by somewhat irregular logic." (Benjamin Disraeli, "Wit and Wisdom, Imagination", 1881)

"The world is devoted to physical science, because it believes theses discoveries will increase its capacity of luxury and self-indulgence. But the pursuit of science only leads to the insoluble. (Benjamin Disraeli, "Lothair", 1870)

"Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action." (Benjamin Disraeli)

"Change is inevitable in a progressive society. Change is constant." (Benjamin Disraeli)

"Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke." (Benjamin Disraeli)

"How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct." (Benjamin Disraeli)

"Ignorance never settles a question." (Benjamin Disraeli)

"Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creature of man. We are free agents, and man is more powerful than matter." (Benjamin Disraeli)

"Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forgo an advantage." (Benjamin Disraeli)

"Nothing can resist a will which will stake even existence upon its fulfillment." (Benjamin Disraeli)

"Nothing in life is more remarkable than the unnecessary anxiety which we endure, and generally create ourselves." (Benjamin Disraeli)

"Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes." (Benjamin Disraeli)

"Philosophy becomes poetry, and science imagination, in the enthusiasm of genius." (Benjamin Disraeli)

"The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own."  (Benjamin Disraeli)

"The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes." (Benjamin Disraeli)

"The secret of success is constancy of purpose." (Benjamin Disraeli)

"The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations." (Benjamin Disraeli)

"There is no education like adversity." (Benjamin Disraeli)

"To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge." (Benjamin Disraeli)

"What art was to the ancient world, Science is to the modern; the distinctive faculty. In the minds of men, the useful has succeeded to the beautiful." (Benjamin Disraeli)

📚Week 2021-17: Murasaki Shikibu - Collected Quotes

"Even those people who have no sorrow of their own often feel melancholy from the circumstances in which they are placed."

"No art or learning is to be pursued halfheartedly [...] and any art worth learning will certainly reward more or less generously the effort made to study it." (Murasaki Shikibu, "The Tale of Genji", cca. 11th century)

"No penance can your hard heart find save such as you long since have taught me to endure [...]" (Murasaki Shikibu, "The Tale of Genji", cca. 11th century)

"Nothing can be well learned that is not agreeable to one’s natural taste." (Murasaki Shikibu, "The Tale of Genji", cca. 11th century)

"Life is full of uncertainties, perhaps one day some unforeseen circumstance would bring her into his life once more." (Murasaki Shikibu, "The Tale of Genji", cca. 11th century)

"It is so rare to find someone of true understanding; for the most part they judge purely by their own standards and ignore everyone else." (Murasaki Shikibu, "The Diary of Lady Murasaki", cca. 11th century)

"Beauty without colour seems somehow to belong to another world." (Murasaki Shikibu)

"It is very easy to criticize others but far more difficult to put one’s own principles into practice, and it is when one forgets this truth, lauds oneself to the skies, treats everyone else as worthless, and generally despises others, that one’s own character is clearly revealed." (Murasaki Shikibu, "Murasaki Shikibu Nikki" ["The Diary of Lady Murasaki"] , cca,. 1010)