Quote collection
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"The self-same atoms which, chaotically dispersed, made the nebula, now, jammed and temporarily caught in peculiar positions, form our brains; and the 'evolution' of brains, if understood, would be simply the account of how the atoms came to be so caught and jammed."
"Do something everyday for no other reason than you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test."
"When two minds of a high order, interested in kindred subjects, come together, their conversation is chiefly remarkable for the summariness of its allusions and the rapidity of its transitions. Before one of them is half through a sentence the other knows his meaning and replies. ... His mental lungs breathe more deeply, in an atmosphere more broad and vast."
"Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?"
"Whenever you're in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude."
"The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact."
"Formula to live your dream: 1. Be bold. 2. Begin now, 3. No exceptions."
"There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision."
"Man can alter his life by altering his thinking."
"Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf."
"When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion."
"The god whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals."
"Habit simplifies our movements, makes them accurate, and diminishes fatigue."
"We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort."
"The transition from tenseness, self-responsibility, and worry, to equanimity, receptivity, and peace, is the most wonderful of all those shiftings of inner equilibrium, those changes of personal centre of energy, which I have analyzed so often; and the chief wonder of it is that it so often comes about, not by doing, but by simply relaxing and throwing the burden down."
"The minute a man ceases to grow, no matter what his years, that minute he begins to be old."
"If you want a confidence, act as if you already have it. Try the "as if" technique."
"It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome."
"Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being."
"Men habitually use only a small part of the power which they actually possess."