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"These are the characteristics of a rational soul: self-awareness, self-examination and self-determination."

Marcus Aurelius

One good reason to fight on is that if we were to give up now, all the suffering we had endured up until that point in our quest would have been in vain.

"Adventure isn't hanging on a rope off the side of a mountain. Adventure is an attitude that we must apply to the day-to-day obstacles of life - facing new challenges, seizing new opportunities, testing our resources against the unknown, and in the process, discovering our own unique potential."

John Amatt

We are all born shackled in ignorance. There is nothing blameworthy in that. However, we are capable of escaping our ignorance if we are but willing to invest the time and energy to do so. Failing our responsibility to do so is indeed blameworthy.

"All original ideas are born in those minds well furnished by the ideas of their predecessors."

Perfection should never be the goal. In all cases it is crucial to understand just how good something needs to be in order to accomplish the goal as effectively and efficiently as possible. Sometimes, 'good enough' is 'good enough'.

“One fact of reality that is often overlooked and certainly unappreciated is that it isn’t just who you are that matters, but how you are perceived by others. You may be a very warm and thoughtful person who is quite competent, but if you fail to communicate that effectively to others, then you will fall short of what you would otherwise be capable of achieving.”

“To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given a chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy."

Bette Davis

“Many yearn for a place and time where no problems exist to be solved, no suffering exists to be endured, and no tears need be wiped away. I am not one of those people. I should not, on that account, be misconstrued as a sadist or masochist as I never welcome or intentionally cause suffering. Rather, I believe that such things are part of what makes us human, and we would not be human without them. Their counterparts, problem solving, compassion, succor and the like are some of the most...

“Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.”

Simone Weil

“In work, the greatest satisfaction lies – the satisfaction of stretching yourself, using your abilities and making them expand, and knowing that you have accomplished something that could have been done only by using your unique apparatus. This is really the center of life, and those who never orient themselves in this direction are missing more than they ever know.”

Kenneth Alsop

“A childlike man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle-aged habit and convention.”

Aldous Huxley

“Nothing but your best is good enough.”

Elbert Hubbard

“Character isn’t inherited. One builds it daily by the way one thinks and acts, thought by thought, action by action. If one lets fear or hate or anger take possession of the mind, the become self-forged chains.”

Helen G. Douglas

“It has been claimed that there are three types of people. Average people talk about things (the weather, sports, etc.). Below average people talk about others (celebrities, gossip, etc.). Above average people talk about ideas (philosophy, sociology, psychology, etc.). What type of person are you?”

“What Thoreau was referring to in the quote: "Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense?" has been labelled ‘brain rot’ and is basically a suppression of one’s innate instincts for curiosity and wonder and instead resigning ourselves to the ‘unreflective’ habits we observe all around us -- habits of fitting in, getting by, chasing profits, chatting about the latest news.”

“The sage does not hoard. The more he helps others, the more he benefits himself.”

Lao Tzu

“Humility is just as much the opposite of self-abasement as it is of self-exaltation.”

Dag Hammarskjold

“Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?”

Nietzsche

“They say the best explanation for the ‘good old days’ is a poor memory.”