Week 2026-06: On Growth

"He that would make a real progress in knowledge must dedicate his age as well as first fruits - the latter growth as well as the first-fruits - at the altar of truth." (Bishop George Berkeley, "Siris", 1744)

"Growth is limited by that necessity which is present in the least amount. And, naturally, the least favorable condition controls the growth rate." (Frank Herbert, "Dune", 1965)

"Pouncing on an idea as soon as it appears kills the idea. Too early and too enthusiastic logical attention either freezes the idea or forces it into the old moulds. Concentration on an idea isolates it from its surroundings and arrests its growth. The glare of attention inhibits the fertile semi-conscious processes that go to develop an idea." (Edward de Bono, "New Think: The Use of Lateral Thinking in the Generation of New Ideas", 1967)

 "It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow." (Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", 1974)

"Magic is hidden in the language we speak. The webs that you can tie and untie are at your command if only you pay attention to what you already have (language) and the structure of the incantations for growth." (Richard Bandler & John Grinder, "The Structure of Magic", 1975)

"The most pervasive paradox of the human condition which we see is that the processes which allow us to survive, grow, change, and experience joy are the same processes which allow us to maintain an impoverished model of the world - our ability to manipulate symbols, that is, to create models. So the processes which allow us to accomplish the most extraordinary and unique human activities are the same processes which block our further growth if we commit the error of mistaking the model of the world for reality." (Richard Bandler & John Grinder, "The Structure of Magic", 1975)

"Each day of human life contains joy and anger, pain and pleasure, darkness and light, growth and decay. Each moment is etched with nature's grand design - do not try to deny or oppose the cosmic order of things." (Morihei Ueshiba, "The Art of Peace", 1991)

"We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance." (John A Wheeler, Scientific American Vol. 267, 1992)

"[...] all problems can be reperceived as challenges, or 'opportunities' to change, grow or learn." (Robert B Dilts, "Sleight of Mouth: The Magic of Conversational Belief Change", 1999)

"Change is the end result of all true learning. Change involves three things: First, a dissatisfaction with self - a felt void or need; second, a decision to change to fill the void or need; and third, a conscious dedication to the process of growth and change - the willful act of making the change, doing something." (Leo Buscaglia)

"Chaos in the world brings uneasiness, but it also allows the opportunity for creativity and growth." (Tom Barrett)

"Don't get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water." (Bruce Lee)

"Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you’re climbing it." (Andy Rooney)

"Fundamentally mindfulness is a simple concept. Its power lies in its practice and its applications. Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally. This kind of attention nurtures greater awareness, clarity, and acceptance of present-moment reality. It wakes us up to the fact that our lives unfold only in moments. If we are not fully present for many of those moments, we may not only miss what is most valuable in our lives but also fail to realize the richness and the depth of our possibilities for growth, and transformation." (Jon Kabat-Zinn)

"Happiness is having a sense of self, not a feeling of being perfect, but of being good enough and knowing that you are in the process of growth, of being, of achieving levels of joy. It’s a wonderful contentment and acceptance of who and what you are and a knowledge that the world and life are full of wondrous adventures and possibilities." (Leo Buscaglia)

"If you were all alone in the universe with no one to talk to, no one with which to share the beauty of the stars, to laugh with, to touch, what would be your purpose in life? It is other life; it is love, which gives your life meaning. This is harmony. We must discover the joy of each other, the joy of challenge, the joy of growth." (Mitsugi Saotome)

"Life is growth, and the more we travel, the more truth we can understand. Understanding the things that surround us is the best preparation to understand the things that lie beyond." (Hypatia of Alexandria)

"Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself." (Lao Tzu)

"Styles tend to not only separate men - because they have their own doctrines and then the doctrine became the gospel truth that you cannot change. But if you do not have a style, if you just say: Well, here I am as a human being, how can I express myself totally and completely? Now, that way you won't create a style, because style is a crystallization. That way, it's a process of continuing growth." (Bruce Lee)

"Suffering is a challenge; when you suffer you are challenged, when there is a problem you are challenged. When you encounter the problem, only then do you grow. More insecurity, more growth; more security, less growth. If everything is secure around you, you are already in your grave, you are no longer alive. Life exists in danger, life always exists in the possibility of going astray. But one who goes astray can come back, one who fails can succeed." (Osho)

"The growth of wisdom may be gauged exactly by the diminution of ill temper." (Friedrich Nietzsche)

"The quality of your growth is a direct reflection of how much discomfort you can comfortably live with" (Anthony Robbins)

"There is a birth and growth of the self. According to his action', the embodied being assumes forms successively in many places; many forms gross and subtle he assumes by force of his own qualities of nature..." (Swetaswatara Upanishad)

"The mind is like a fertile garden. It will grow anything you wish to plant - beautiful flowers or weeds. And so it is with successful, healthy thoughts or with negative ones that will, like weeds, strangle and crowd the others. Do not allow negative thoughts to enter your mind for they are the weeds that strangle confidence." (Bruce Lee)

"Wasting energy to obtain rare objects only impedes one's growth." (Lao Tzu)

"You have to start where people are, because their growth is going to be from there, not from some abstraction or where you are or someone else is." (Myles Horton)

Week 2019-22

"There is no arithmetician like him who hath learned to number his days, and to apply his heart unto wisdom." (George Swinnock, "The Epistle Dedicatory", 1868)

"The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it." (Eric Hoffer, "The Passionate State of Mind", 1955)

"A man can only rise, conquer, and achieve by lifting up his thoughts. He can only remain weak, and abject, and miserable by refusing to lift up his thoughts." (James Allen, "As a Man Thinketh", 1903)

"The helps offered to improve the mind consist in certain ways of thinking which facilitate thinking." (Gottfried W Leibniz)

"Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in.” (Isaac Asimov)

"One must talk about everything according to its nature, how it comes to be and how it grows. Men have talked about the world without paying attention to the world of their own minds, as if they were asleep or absent-minded." (Heraclitus)

"If you want truly to understand something, try to change it." (Kurt Lewin)

"Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war." (Sir Winston Churchill)

"This terror then and darkness of mind must be dispelled not by the rays of the sun and glittering shafts of light, but by the aspect and law of nature." (Lucretius)

"One must talk about everything according to its nature, how it comes to be and how it grows. Men have talked about the world without paying attention to the world of their own minds, as if they were asleep or absent-minded." (Heraclitus)

Week 2019-24

[#belief, #action]
“Every belief that you hold manifests itself in some manner by either causing you to take some form of action or by preventing you from taking action. If you don't believe something is possible, you won't even attempt it.” (Chris Prentiss, “Zen and the Art of Happiness”, 2006)

[#truth, #expectations]
"An ignorant man believes that the whole universe only exists for him: as if nothing else required any consideration. If, therefore, anything happens to him contrary to his expectation, he at once concludes that the whole universe is evil. If, however, he would take into consideration the whole universe, form an idea of it, and comprehend what a small portion he is of the Universe, he will find the truth." (Maimonides, "Guide for the Perplexed", cca. 1190)

[#limits, #creativity]
"I dislike frontiers, political or intellectual, and I find that ignoring them is an essential catalyst for creative thought. Ideas should flow without hindrance in their natural course." (Michael Atiyah)

[#models, #growth]
“Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.” (John Stuart Mill)

[#experience, #perception]
"We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them." (Kahlil Gibran)

[#growth, #life]
"It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow." (Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", 1974)

[#vision, #dreams]
"Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens." (Carl Gustav Jung)

[#happiness, #self]
"The great majority of spiritual teachings are based on the idea of seeking happiness while standing in afixated self, whereas Zen states that happiness comes through dissolving and unfixating that self. In other words, by dissolving we mean that act oj true love which is the total giving of one's being to the so called other." (Joshu Sasaki Roshi)

[#knowledge, #self]
"Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know my self, to know it completely, to know its minutiae, its characteristics, its subtleties, and its very atoms." (Khalil Gibran)

[#learning, #mastery]
"It is known that, when we learn or train in something, we pass through the stages of shu, ha, and ri. These stages are explained as follows. In shu, we repeat the forms and discipline ourselves so that our bodies absorb the forms that our forebears created. We remain faithful to these forms with no deviation. Next, in the stage of ha, once we have disciplined ourselves to acquire the forms and movements, we make innovations. In this process the forms may be broken and discarded. Finally, in ri, we completely depart from the forms, open the door to creative technique, and arrive in a place where we act in accordance with what our heart/mind desires, unhindered while not overstepping laws." (Endō Seishirō)

Week 2019-23

"All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything." (Swami Vivekananda)

"What I have learned, above all, is to keep marching forward because the best news is that since chance does play a role, one important factor in success is under our control: the number of at bats, the number of chances taken, the number of opportunities seized." (Leonard Mlodinow, "The Drunkard's Walk", 2008)

“There is a life and there is a death, and there are beauty and melancholy between.” (Albert Camus)

"In other living creatures the ignorance of themselves is nature, but in men it is a vice." (Boethius)

“Nature is filled with tendencies and obstructions. Extremes beget limitations, even as a river by its own swiftness creates obstructions for itself.” (Robert G Ingersoll)

"No great thing comes without a curse" (Sophocles)

"All truth is a shadow except the last. But every truth is substance in its own place, though it be but shadow in another place. And the shadow is a true shadow, as the substance is a true substance." (Isaac Pennington)

"There is no arithmetician like him who hath learned to number his days, and to apply his heart unto wisdom." (George Swinnock, "The Epistle Dedicatory", 1868)

"The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it." (Eric Hoffer, "The Passionate State of Mind", 1955)

"A man can only rise, conquer, and achieve by lifting up his thoughts. He can only remain weak, and abject, and miserable by refusing to lift up his thoughts." (James Allen, "As a Man Thinketh", 1903)

Week 2017-46

[#happiness, #love]
"Happiness is like a kiss. You must share it to enjoy it." (Bernard Meltzer)

[#illusion, #solitude]
"Man has the illusion that he talks with the entire world from his computer. He is actually alone." (Octavian Paler)

[#happiness, #attachment]
"If your happiness depends on what somebody else does, I guess  you do have a problem."    (Richard Bach)

[#action, #growth]
"If you wish to move mountains tomorrow, you must start by lifting stones today." (African saying)

[#knowledge, #action]
"Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better." (Maya Angelou)

[#mastery, #growth]
"Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.” (Ronald E. Osborn)

[#love, #completeness]
"We love in others what we lack ourselves, and would be everything but what we are.” (Richard Henry Stoddard)

[#happiness, #timing]
"Plenty of people miss their share of happiness, not because they never found it, but because they didn’t stop to enjoy it.” (William Feather)

[#perception, #learning]
"Some people never learn the art of compromise. Everything is either black or white. They do not recognize, or will not concede, that the equally important color gray is a mixture of black and white.” (Waite Phillips)

[#hardship, #learning]
"Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass – it’s about learning to dance in the rain.” (Anon)

Week 2017-43

"The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do." (Michael Porter)

"The greater is the circle of light, the greater is the boundary of the darkness by which it is confined." (Joseph Priestley)

"One of the elementary rules of nature is that, in the absence of a law prohibiting an event or phenomenon, it is bound to occur with some degree of probability. To put it simply and crudely: Anything that can happen does happen." (Kenneth W Ford)

"To choose a road, to stop habitually and ask whether you have not gone astray, that is the true method.” (Louis Pasteur)

"Responsibility is not doing as we are told, that's obedience. Responsibility is doing what is right.” (Simon Sinek)

"The adventurer is within us, and he contests for our favor with the social man we are obliged to be." (William Bolitho)

"We search for ways to see ourselves. The computer is a new mirror, the first psychological machine. Beyond its nature as an analytical engine lies its second nature as an evocative object." (Sherry Turkle)

"Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind." (Leonardo da Vinci)

"Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won’t come in." (Alan Alda)

“He who every morning plans the transaction of the day and follows out that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through the maze of the most busy life. But where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incidence, chaos will soon reign." (Victor Hugo)

"Nothing is more powerful for your future than being a gatherer of good ideas and information. That’s called doing your homework." (Jim Rohn)

Week 2017-37

[#imagination, #human nature]
"Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is." (Francis Bacon)

[#life, #duality]
"There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself." (Herman Melville)

[#beliefs, #confidence]
"Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained." (Marie Curie)

[#values, #strength]
"The promises of this world are, for the most part, vain phantoms; and to confide in one's self, and become something of worth and value is the best and safest course." (Michelangelo)

[#spirituality, #simplicity]
"To realise the constancy and steadiness in your life is to realise the deep nature of the universe. This realisation is not dependent on any transitory internal or external condition, rather it is an expression of one’s own immutable spiritual nature. The only way to attain the Universal Way is to maintain the integral virtues of the constancy, steadiness and simplicity in one’s daily life." (Lao Tzu)

[#knowledge, #values]
"Knowledge is the highest good, truth the supreme value, all the rest is secondary and subordinate." (Aldous Huxley)

[#truth, #goals]
"Approximate truth is the only truth attainable, but at least one must strive for that, and not wade off into arbitrary falsehood." (George Eliot)

[#simplicity, #values]
"The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity." (Ludwig Wittgenstein

[#facts, #wisdom]
"Facts are ventriloquists' dummies. Sitting on a wise man's knee they may be made to utter words of wisdom; elsewhere they say nothing or talk nonsense..." (Aldous Huxley)

[#journeys, #spirituality]
"If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things." (René Descartes)

[#journeys, #truth]
"Keep the company of those who seek the truth - run from those who have found it." (VÁCLAV HAVEL)

Week 2017-35

"Thus all our dignity lies in thought. By thought we must raise ourselves, not by space and time, which we cannot fill." (Blaise Pascal)

"When the mind loses its feeling for elegance, it grows corrupt and grovelling, and seeks in the crowd what ought to be found at home." (Walter Savage Landor)

"Much knowledge of divine things is lost to us through want of faith." (Heraclitus)

"Education is the knowledge of how to use the whole of oneself. Many men use but one or two faculties out of the score with which they are endowed. A man is educated who knows how to make a tool of every faculty how to open it, how to keep it sharp, and how to apply it to all practical purposes." (Henry Ward Beecher)

"The fountain of content must spring up in the mind; and he who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts, and multiply the griefs which he proposes to remove." (Samuel Johnson)

"Contemplation is to knowledge, what digestion is to food the way to get life out of it." (Tryon Edwards)

"A consciousness of inward knowledge gives confidence to the outward behavior, which, of all things, is the best to grace a man in his carriage." (Owen Feltham)

"If you look at the world through rose-coloured spectacles, you cannot tell which parts of it really are rosy and which parts just look rosy." (Oliver Penrose, “An Asymmetric World”)

Week 2017-34

[#understanding, #perception]
"When we want to understand something we cannot just stand outside and observe it. We have to enter deeply into it and be one with it in order to really understand." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

[#education, #growth]
"You have to start where people are, because their growth is going to be from there, not from some abstraction or where you are or someone else is." (Myles Horton)

[#flow, #choice]
"Stop choosing between chaos and order and live at the boundary between them where rest and action move together." (Rainer Maria Rilke)

[#understanding, #pain]
"[...] if we understood ourselves better, we would damage ourselves less." (James Baldwin)

[#detachment, #awareness]
"This is what Zen means by being detached - not being without emotion or feeling, but being one in whom feeling is not sticky or blocked, and through whom the experiences of the world pass like the reflections of birds flying over water." (Alan Watts)

[#mind, #meditation]
"The mind has power over the body and speech, and therefore any training of body and speech must begin with the mind." (Dalai Lama, “Stages Of Meditation”)

[#change, #patience]
"To master change, nothing is more important than to know the time; to know the time, nothing is more important than to understand inner design; to understand inner design, nothing is more important than open calm." (Li Daoqun, “The Book of Balance and Harmony”)

[#patience, #acceptance]
"Patience is the calm acceptance that things can happen in a different order than the one you have in mind." (David G. Allen)

[#action, #impossible]
"Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible." (M. C. Escher)

[#self, #love]
"There is in fact no self which needs to be negated. We merely manifest self in terms of our affection and love for people and our willingness to work. When we manifest this way, the self that needs to be negated is already negated." (Kyozan Joshu Sasaki)

[#truth, #human nature]
"If the individual, or heretic, gets hold of some essential truth, or sees some error in the system being practised, he commits so many marginal errors himself that he is worn out before he can establish his point." (Ezra Pound)

Week 2017-33

"The more a man can forget, the greater the number of metamorphoses which his life can undergo, the more he can remember the more divine his life becomes." (Soren Kierkegaard)

"Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic." (Frank Herbert)

"Peaceful is the one who's not concerned with having more or less." (Rumi)

"Balance is the all-important factor in a fighter’s attitude or stance. Without balance at all times, he can never be effective." (Bruce Lee, “Tao of Jeet Kune Do”)

"Never fear the shadows. They simply mean that there's a light somewhere nearby." (Ruth E Renkel)

"All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware." (Martin Buber)

"Don’t search for heaven and hell in the future. Both are now present. Whenever we manage to love without expectations, calculations, negotiations, we are indeed in heaven. Whenever we fight, hate, we are in hell." (Shams Tabrizi)

"Non-action is the real action. One hundred acts are not as good as one moment of silence. One hundred exercises are not as good as one moment of standing still." (Wang Xiang Zhai)

"A problem is a question you haven't yet answered to a level that has fulfilled you." (Tony Robbins)

"The most important function of education at any level is to develop the personality of the individual and the significance of his life to himself and to others. This is the basic architecture of a life; the rest is ornamentation and decoration of the structure." (Grayson L. Kirk)

Week 2017-11

[#growth, #reality]
"Every spirit builds itself a house; and beyond its house a world; and beyond its world, a heaven... Build, therefore, your own world." (Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nature”, 1836)

[#happiness, #quest]
"People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost." (H. Jackson Browne)

[#knowledge, #chaos]
"Don't worry that your life is turning upside down.
How do you know that the side you are used to is better than the one to come?" (Rumi)

[#confidence, #knowledge]
"Confidence is not about being always right, but always knowing what to do when things go wrong." (Anon)

[#learning]
"Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” (Thomas H. Huxley)

[#education]
"Children have to be educated, but they have also to be left to educate themselves." (Abbe Dimnet, "Art of Thinking", 1928)

[#love, #wisdom]
"Remember, one can only know what one is capable of loving. There is no wisdom without love." (Shams Tabrizi)

[#learning, #truth]
"The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue." (Antisthenes)

[#education, #inquiry]
"The journey for an education starts with a childhood question." (David L Finn)

[#learning, #perception]
"Through learning we re-create ourselves. Through learning we become able to do something we never were able to do. Through learning we re-perceive the world and our relationship to it. Through learning we extend our capacity to create, to be part of the generative process of life. There is within each of us a deep hunger for this type of learning." (Peter Senge)

Week 2017-10

"Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things." (Winston Churchill)

"Where shall we begin? There is no beginning. Start where you arrive. Stop before what entices you. And work! You will enter little by little into the entirety. Method will be born in proportion to your interest." (Auguste Rodin)

"The most dangerous of our prejudices reign in ourselves against ourselves. To dissolve them is a creative act." (Hugo von Hofmannsthal)

"[…] there are no backwaters. There is only one river, and we are all in it." (Scott Russell Sanders, “Writing from the Center”, 1997)

"There is another interesting paradox here: by immersing ourselves in what we love, we find ourselves. We do not lose ourselves. One does not lose one’s identity by falling in love." (Lukas Foss)

"If you look for the truth outside yourself, it gets farther and farther away." (Tung-shan)

"If one will just think about what he is to do for the day at hand, he will be able to do anything. If it is a single day's work, one should be able to put up with it. Tomorrow, too, is but a single day." (Hagakure)

"Maturity of mind is the capacity to endure uncertainty." (John Finley)

"No object is mysterious. The mystery is in your eye." (Elizabeth Bowen)

"There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living." (Nelson Mandela)

Week 2017-08

"Perhaps the most important thing we can undertake toward the reduction of fear is to make it easier for people to accept themselves; to like themselves." (Bonaro Overstreet)

"Pick the assumptions to pieces till the stuff they are made of is exposed to plain view - this is the cardinal rule for understanding the basis of our beliefs. (Eric Temple Bell, "The Search for Truth")

"If you limit your actions in life to things that nobody can possibly find fault with, you will not do much." (Lewis Carroll)

"So many things are possible just as long as you don't know they're impossible." (Norton Juster)

"You will, if you’re wise and know the art of travel, let yourself go on the stream of the unknown and accept whatever comes in the spirit in which the gods may offer it." (Freya Stark)

"In my experience, there is only one motivation, and that is desire. No reasons or principle contain it or stand against it." (Jane Smiley)

"A man's maturity consists in having found again the seriousness one had as a child at play." (Friedrich Nietzsche)

"Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind." (Seneca the Younger)

"It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation." (Herman Melville)

"There can only be one solution to any problem: a change in attitude and in consciousness." (Gregg Braden)

Week 2017-04

"Never idealize others. They will never live up to your expectations." (Leo Buscaglia)

"Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, it's unlikely that you will step up and take responsibility for making it so." (Noam Chomsky)

"Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty." (Frank Herbert, "Dune Chronicles: Chapterhouse")

"It is not wisdom but ignorance that teaches men presumption. Genius may sometimes be arrogant, but nothing is so diffident as knowledge." (Edward Bulwer-Lytton)

"The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are." (Samuel Johnson)

"All the knowledge that we mortals can acquire is not knowledge positive, but knowledge comparative, and subject to the errors and passions of humanity." (Edward Bulwer-Lytton)

"Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values." (Dalai Lama)

"The shortest and surest way of arriving at real knowledge is to unlearn the lessons we have been taught, to mount the first principles, and take nobody's word about them." (Henry Bolingbroke)

"Keeping an open mind is a virtue, but not so open that your brains fall out." (James Oberg)

"Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings." (Anaïs Nin)

Week 2017-03

[#assumptions, #errors]
"Most deadly errors arise from obsolete assumptions." (Frank Herbert, “Dune - Children of Dune”)

[#wisdom, #knowledge]
"To wisdom belongs the intellectual apprehension of eternal things; to knowledge, the rational knowledge of temporal things." (Saint Augustine)

[#skills, #growth]
"I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor." (Henry David Thoreau)

[#love, #desire]
"Perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn to be loved, that is, we demand something (love) from our partner instead of delivering ourselves up to him demand-free and asking for nothing but his company." (Milan Kundera)

[#letting go, #control]
"Letting go doesn't mean that you don't care about someone anymore. It's just realizing that the only person you really have control over is yourself." (Deborah Reber)

[#limits, #balance]
"Sometimes we have to travel to the edge of ourselves to find the center." (Buck Ghosthorse)

[#change, #perception]
"If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it." (Mary Engelbreit)

[#appearances, #errors]
"Be suspicious of anything that works perfectly - it’s probably because two errors are canceling each other out." (Dave Bartley)

[#teaching, #practice]
"Never forget that, at the most, the teacher can give you fifteen percent of the art. The rest you have to get for yourself through practice and hard work." (Tan Soh Tin)

[#reason, #action]
"Those who will not reason perish in the act: Those who will not act perish for that reason." (W.H. Auden)

Week 2017-02

"The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds." (Nicholas Sparks)

"Abandon certainty! That's life's deepest command. That's what life's all about. We're a probe into the unknown, into the uncertain." (Frank Herbert, "Dune")

"No literature is sound, no philosophy of action workable, if it doesn’t take a hard look at itself." (John W. Campbell)

"Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained." (C. S. Lewis)

"You cannot create experience. You must undergo it." (Albert Camus)

"Understanding arises from reducing one type of reality into another." (Claude Lévi-Strauss)

"Forgiving someone doesn’t give them a free pass. It gives you a free pass to move on." (Charles F Glassman)

"Your strength is in your calmness, in the clarity of your mind. Strength comes from putting the negative aside without reacting. Win in calmness, in consciousness, in balance. Win without fighting." (Yogi Amrit Desai)

"Order and simplification are the first steps toward mastery of a subject - the actual enemy is the unknown.: (Thomas Mann)

"Do not destroy what you cannot create." (Leó Szilárd)

Week 2017-01

"One does not set out in search of new lands without being willing to be alone on an empty sea." (André Gide)

"Human beings know a lot of things, some of which are true, and apply them. When we like the results, we call it wisdom."(Herbert Simon)

"Suffering is a challenge; when you suffer you are challenged, when there is a problem you are challenged. When you encounter the problem, only then do you grow. More insecurity, more growth; more security, less growth. If everything is secure around you, you are already in your grave, you are no longer alive. Life exists in danger, life always exists in the possibility of going astray. But one who goes astray can come back, one who fails can succeed." (Osho)

"If you optimize everything, you will always be unhappy." (Donald Knuth)

"Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well." (Gandhi)

"That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the task itself has become easier, but that our ability to perform it has improved." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

"We need to learn to set our course by the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship." (Omar Bradley)

"Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance is the death of knowledge." (Alfred N Whitehead)

"It is a fine thing to have ability, but the ability to discover ability in others is the true test." (Elbert Hubbard)

"This is the awe-inspiring universe of magic: There are no atoms, only waves and motions all around. Here, you discard all belief in barriers to understanding. You put aside understanding itself. This universe cannot be seen, cannot be heard, cannot be detected in any way by fixed perceptions. It is the ultimate void where no preordained screens occur upon which forms may be projected. You have only one awareness here - the screen of the magi: Imagination! Here, you learn what it is to be human. You are a creator of order, of beautiful shapes and systems, an organizer of chaos." (Frank Herbert, “Heretics of Dune”, 1984)

Week 2016-52

"One's work may be finished some day, but one's education never." (Alexandre Dumas)

"Be patient towards all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves." (Rainer Maria Rilke)

   
"Make a game of finding something positive in every situation. Ninety-five percent of your emotions are determined by how you interpret events to yourself." (Brain Tracy)

"Without change there is no innovation, creativity, or incentive for improvement. Those who initiate change will have a better opportunity to manage the change that is inevitable." (William Pollard)

"The dark night of the soul is when you have lost the flavor of life but have not yet gained the fullness of divinity." (Ram Dass)   

"The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect, but by the play instinct arising from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the object it loves." (Carl Jung)

"When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves." (Victor Frankl)

"The first step is to penetrate the clouds of deceit and distortion and learn the truth about the world, then to organize and act to change it. That's never been impossible and never been easy." (Noam Chomsky)

"To accomplish great things we must dream as well as act." (Anatole France)

"To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly." (Henri Bergson)

Week 2016-48

"Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom" (Charles Haddon Spurgeon)

"To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science." (Albert Einstein)

"The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet." (James Oppenheim)

"Discoveries are often made by not following instructions, by going off the main road, by trying the untried." (Frank Tyger)

"We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane." (Kurt Vonnegut, “Breakfast of Champions,” 1973)

"We can cope with anything if we have the tools and can draw on our inner power. But there is no sun without rain; no joy without spiritual awareness; and no growth without the knowledge that help is always available and we can deal with life’s difficulties." (Joy Ward)

"Without a sense of urgency, desire loses its value." (Jim Rohn)

"We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty." (Maya Angelou)

"When we seek to discover the best in others, we somehow bring out the best in ourselves." (William Arthur Ward)

"No matter what happens, it is within my power to turn it to my advantage." (Epictetus)

"Yesterday is but a dream, tomorrow but a vision. But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well, therefore, to this day." (Indian saying)

Week 2016-46

"Every person has only one purpose: to find perfection in goodness. Therefore, only that knowledge is necessary which leads us to this." (Leo Tolstoy)

"More wisdom is latent in things as they are than in all the words men use." (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

"Change happens in the boiler room of our emotions - so find out how to light their fires." (Jeff Dewar)

"Wisdom is meaningless until our own experience has given it meaning." (Bergen Evans)

"If all knowledge were good, then pursuit of every sort of knowledge would be useful. But many false meditations are disguised as good and useful knowledge; therefore, be strict in selecting the knowledge you want to acquire." (Leo Tolstoy)

"Change is the end result of all true learning. Change involves three things: First, a dissatisfaction with self - a felt void or need; second, a decision to change to fill the void or need; and third, a conscious dedication to the process of growth and change - the willful act of making the change, doing something." (Leo Buscaglia)

"Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and create a new ending." (Maria Robinson)

"The most important knowledge is that which guides the way you lead your life." (Seneca the Younger)

"The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn." (David Russell)

"You should study more to understand that you know little." (Michel de Montaigne)