Catch-all quotebook

Like most people, I enjoy collecting things: I come from a family of amateur rock hounds; I often buy maps of places I’ve been; I’ve recently begun dabbling in the philatelic arts; there is nothing better than a small (or large) collection of well-loved fountain pens—and plenty of quality paper to go with them. If you ask my wife, she’d probably tell you I like collecting books a bit too much.

About a decade ago, I came across some photoscans of some of my Grandpa’s spiral-bound, college-ruled notebooks. They were jam-packed with hundreds of eclectic quotes—ideas, metaphors, anecdotes, and snippets, motivational or not, that stuck out to him as he read.

I’m not sure how often he thumbed through his trove of handwritten material, nor how useful it was in his day-to-day life. Yet I couldn’t help but be inspired by the diligence with which he recorded each one. They were like aspirational snapshots into the mind of a man I would never, unfortunately, get to know as an adult.

Shortly thereafter, I started creating quotebooks of my own. I have intermittently kept up the habit in various notebooks, journals, and scraps of paper over the intervening decade.

This digital catch-all is my attempt to aggregate and store some of the quotes I’ve found interesting, inspiring, and otherwise. Someday, someone may enjoy scrolling through these quotes in the same way I enjoyed seeing my grandpa’s. Who knows, it may even be you?

Format: #. Tag. “Quote.” (Source)

Character: “When JP Morgan was asked what he considered the best bank collateral, he replied, ‘Character.’…No one can wish or dream himself into a good character. He must hammer and forge one for himself. Lloyd George said: ‘There is nothing so fatal to character as half-finished tasks.’” (Sterling Sill, The Wealth of Wisdom, 60)
Wisdom: “With all thy getting, get understanding.” (Proverbs 4:7)
Speech: “Language most shows a man. Speak, that I may see thee.” (Ben Johnson)
Language: “Isn’t it funny the way some combinations of words can give you—almost apart from their meaning—a thirll like music?” (C.S. Lewis, Letter of 21 March, 1916, para. 3, The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (NY: Collier Books, 1986), 96)
Education: “Education is the cheap defense of nations.” (Edmund Burke)
Wisdom: “Many would come to wisdom if they did not think themselves already there.” (Bacon)
Upright Mind: “Man’s chief good is an upright miind, which no earthly power can bestow, nor take from him.” (Scott, Elocution (1820), 57)
Cheer: “A cheerful countenance betokens a good heart.” (Ibid.)
Pride: “Anxiety and constraint are the constant attendants of pride.” (Ibid.)
Spontaneity: “Put yourself in a situation where you’re not sure what the next twenty-four hours will bring.” (Beau Miles)
Genius: “Men give me some credit for genius. All the genius I have lies just in this: When I have a subject in hand, I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. I explore it in all its bearings. My mind becomes pervaded with it. Then, that effort which I make, the people are pleased to call it the fruit of genius. It is the fruit of labor and thought.” (Alexander Hamilton).
Prayer: “Let your first good morning be to your Father in Heaven.” (Karl G. Maeser)
Words: “I believed then, as I do now, in the goodness of the published word: It seemed to contain an essential goodness, like the smell of leaf mold.” (E.B. White)
Writing: “When Andy [E.B. White] asked [his boss at the Seattle Times] how to describe a story, his boss thought for a moment and then said, ‘Just say the words.’ It was sound advice that Andy remembered for the rest of his life.” (Melissa Sweet, Some Writer, 35)
Things That Matter: For Things that Are a Part of Me
When days, by ending, make me old
When neither fortune comes, nor gold
When love, with eyes that speak the truth
Backs slowly from me, like my youth
And friends who know their way alone
Go forth and leave me, one by one;
Still I must very thankful be
For things that are a part of me
That when I read a pretty line,
A little flame goes down my spine,
That when I see the morning sun
I laugh to think the world’s begun.
(E.B. White, “The Conning Tower,” New York World, (1926?))
Alive, Awake, Enchantment: “Once in everyone’s life there is apt to be a period when he is fully awake instead of half-asleep. I thin of those five years in Maine as the time when this happened to me. Confronted by new challenges, surrounded by new acquaintances—including the characters in the barnyard who were later to appear in Charlotte’s Web—I was suddenly seeing, feeling, and listening as a child sees, feels, and listens. It was one of those rare interludes that can never be repeated, a time of enchantment. I am fortunate indeed to have had the chance to get some of it down on paper.” (E.B. White, One Man’s Meat, 1982)
Work: “I may be an average man, but by George I work harder at it than the average man.” (Teddy Roosevelt)
Resistance: “The impeded stream is the one that sings.” (Wendell Berry)
Creativity: “Creativity doesn’t hinge on getting everything right. Creativity thrives when stuff goes wrong. When Miguel Cervantes was wrongly imprisoned, he wrote Don Quixote, one of the greatest pieces of literature of all time. In spite of being deaf and blind, Helen Keller learned to use her voice to change the world…creativity flourishes when times get tough.” (Chris Orwig, The Creative Fight, 6)
Creativity: “You have to go after creativity with a club.” (Jack London)
Purpose: “I was on the world. But was I in it?…I was tormented with soul hunger…the mountains are calling and I must go.” (John Muir)
Pure enthusiasm: “His face shown with pure and holy enthusiasm…he was like a mountain goat jumping from boulder to boulder with a joyous, ringing laugh rhapsodizing about the wonders of God.” (Theresa Yelverton on John Muir)
Imagination: “The power of imagination makes us infinite.” (John Muir)
Work: “Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” (Teddy Roosevelt)
The Journey: “How you climb a mountain is more important than reaching the top.” (Yvon Chowinard, mountaineer)
Awareness: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” (Plato)
Purpose: “For me, photography wasn’t about the camera and lens. It was about pursuit to savor life, to encourage others, and to grow and be changed. My photographs weren’t plastic trophies, but journal entries of how my soul had grown. This realization freed me from the trap I was in.” (Chris Orwig, The Creative Fight, 16)
See Miracles: “And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.” (Roald Dahl)
Clear Writing: “Because he wrote so clearly that anybody with a good basic education could understand what he was saying, Jack [London] put the critics out of business.” (Earl Labor [biographer])
Live Well: “The greatest story Jack London ever wrote was the story he lived.” (Literary critic, cited in Orwig, The Creative Fight, 48)
On Living Well: “I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my speck should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb mentor, every atom of me a magnificent glow, then a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.” (Jack London)
Living: “It is not death that man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” (Marcus Aurelius)
Passion: “One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested.” (E.M. Forster)
Passion: “Passion, though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Be Yourself: “There is no one alive that is youer than you.” (Dr. Seuss [Ted Geisel])
Purpose: “The two most important days of your life are the day you were born and the day you figure out why.” (Mark Twain)
Work Hard: “The harder I work, the luckier I get.” (Coleman Cox)
Inspiration: “The advice I like to give to young artists or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work.” (Chuck Close [paralyzed artist])
Inspiration: “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” (Pablo Picasso)
Humility: “The heartfelt realization of one’s own insignificance yields a calming sense of being completely corrected to a greater whole.” (Steve Callahan)
Silence: “Nothing has changed the nature of man so much as the loss of silence.” (Max Picard)
Distraction: “Distraction is the very foundation of ego, the way we protect ourselves against both the pains of life and th eoopen space of an awakened mind.” (Judy Lief)
Concentration: “Relearning how to concentrate is one of the great challenges of our time. To sit still and think, without succumbing to an anxious reach for a machine, has become almost impossible.” (Alain de Bolton)
Dreaming: “Those who dream by day are cognizant of things which escape those who only dream by night.” (Edgar Allen Poe)
Seizing Opportunities: “Life is short, and its uncertain. With that said, how could we possibly miss the opportunity of each day?” (SR-71 Blackbird Pilot Brian Schul)
Opportunity: “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” (Unknown)
Life: “Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music—the world is so rich, simply throbbing ith rich treasures, beautiful souls, and interesting people.” (Henry Miller)
Work: “This is the real secret of life—to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and the now, and instead of calling it work, realize it is play.” (Alan W. Watts)
Play: “Nothing lights up the brain like play.” (Dr. Stuart Brown, Neuroscientist)
Play: “Play is the highest form of research.” (Einstein)
Creativity: “The chief enemy of creativity is common sense.” (Picasso)
Playing: “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” (George Bernard Shaw)
Writing: “Whenever we give our pens some free will, we may surprise ourselves.” (Sharon Olds)
Sacrifice of will: “The first duty is to sacrifice to the gods and pray them to grant you the thoughts, words, and deeds likely to render you command most pleasing to the gods and to bring yourself, your friends, and your city the fullest measure of affection and glory and advantage.” (Xenophon, The Cavalry Commander)
Divine Assistance: “When we sit down day after day and keep grinding, something mysterious starts to happen. A process is set into motion by which, inevitably and infallibly, heaven comes to our aid. Unseen forces enlist in our cause; serendipity reinforces our purpose.” (Steven Pressfield, The War of Art)
Creativity: “Eternity is in love with the creations of our time.” (William Blake)
Discipline: “Discipline is doing something you hate as if you love it.” (Mike Tyson)
Suffering: “We give our suffering meaning by the way we respond to it.” (Victor Frankl)
Writing: “Write the book you want to read.” (Austin Kleon)
Progress: “Discontent is the first necessity of progress.” (Thomas Alva Edison)
Starting: “We only have today. Let us begin.” (Mother Teresa)
Being Authentic: “Becoming real takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.” (Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit)
Flaws/Imperfections: “Ring the bell that can still ring. There are cracks in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” (Leonard Cohen)
Float: “Walk around feeling like a leaf. Know you could tumble at any second. Then decide what to do with your time.” (Naomi Shihab Nye)
Doing: “To achieve great things, two things are needed: A plan, and not enough time.” (Leonard Bernstein)
Hope: “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” (Martin Luther King Jr.)
Nutrition: “Let food be thy medicine.” (Hippocrates)
Work: “How you do anything is how you do everything.” (Rich Roll)
Nature: “At last beloved nature! I have met
Thee face to face upon thy breezy hills.” (Henry Timrod)
Wisdom: “The years teach much which the days never know.” (Emerson)
Humility: “True humiity is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.” (C.S. Lewis)
Giving: “Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, running over…For with that same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.” (Luke 6:38)
Heroes: “No nobler feeling ever dwells in the breasts of men than to have a sincere admiration for those who have higher ideals and greater ambitions than we ourselves have.” (Thomas Carlyle)
Living: “Not where I breathe, but where I love, I live.” (Robert Southwell)
Humility: “Not a day passed by, that the world was not the better because this man, humble as he was, had lived.” (Nathiel Hawthorne, “The Great Stone Face”)
Consequences/Rewards: “Who does the work? Who bears the consequences? Who reaps the rewards? When the incentives are aligned, it’s the same person.” (James Clear)
Quality Work: “If you have a Quality idea but you are not presenting it in a Quality manner, then the work is not done.” (Source).
Suffering; Connection: “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people. An artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian.” (James Baldwin, LIFE Magazine, 1962)
Change: “Change is the only constant in life.” (Heraclitus)
Unpredictability/Chess/Counterinsurgency: “No chess player has ever found, nor is any likely to find, a sure way of winning from the first move. The game contains too many variables even for one of today’s nerveless computers to plot out a guaranteed checkmate.” (Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare, 1)
Sympathetic Magic: “Sympathetic Magic: If you truly want something, than make your version of the thing out of whatever you have at your disposal and, due to unpredictable forces beyond your control, the universe may align just right to get you that thing. That thing you desire.” (Van Neistat)
Change/History: “Every age has its follies, but the folly of our age has been an irresistible desire to change the world without first studying and understanding it.” (Antonio Giustozzi)
Persistence: “Until a man knows he is defeated, he is never defeated.” (George S. Patton)
Simplicity: “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage—to move in the opposite direction.” (E.F. Schumacher)
Writing: “By now his techniques were well honed: visit the site, devour the printed sources, write a draft (four hours a day, seven days a week until complete) and submit it to expert scrutiny. He travelled much of the route, worked furiously at the State Library of Victoria, and presented his typescript for scholars to assess.” (On Alan Moorehead’s Writing Technique)
Faith and Discipline: “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” (James Stockdale, source)
Henry Miller’s Commandments of Writing: Work on one thing at a time until finished.
Start no more new books, add no more new material to ‘Black Spring.’
Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.
Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!
When you can’t create you can work.
Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.
Keep human!
See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.
Don’t be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.
Discard the Program when you feel like it—but go back to it next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.
Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.
Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.
Writing: “You cannot write well without data.” (George Higgins)
Pushing Yourself: “I am always doing what I can’t do yet in order to learn how to do it.” (Vincent van Gogh, Letter to Anthon van Rappard (1885))
Amazing Rejection: “We have read your manuscript with boundless delight. If we were to publish your paper, it would be impossible for us to publish any work of lower standard. And as it is unthinkable that in the next thousand years we shall see its equal, we are, to our regret, compelled to return your divine composition and to beg you a thousand times to overlook our short sight and timidity.” (Estelle Gilson, translation of a rejection slip issued by a Chinese economic journal, AKA the most incredible way to say no)
Cheer: “A cheerful countenance betokens a good heart.” (Scott, Elocution, 1820, p. 57)
Age: “The young are slaves to novelty, the old to custom.” (Ibid., 58)
Performance: “To say little and perform much, is the characteristic of a great mind.” (Ibid.)
True Worth: “We esteem most things according to their intrinsic merit; it is strange, man should be an exception. We prize a horse for his strength and courage, not for his furniture. We prize a man for his sumptuous palace, his great train, his vast revenue; yet these are his furniture, not his mind.” (ibid., 58)
Life Purpose: “It was a saying of Socrates, that we should eat and drink in order to live; instead of living, as many do, in order to eat and drink.” (Ibid.)
Knowledge: “Apply yourself more to acquire knowledge than to show it. Men commonly take great pains to put off the little stock they have; but they take little pains to acquire more.” (Ibid., 60)
Abraham Lincoln: “When Abe worked nearby, Matilda Johnson was allowed to carry his lunch to him. Sometimes as she came near, she saw him standing on a stump orating. She amused herself by trying to guess what it was he recited—the Declaration of Independence, the sermon of the last Sunday, or a chapter from Isaiah. All these were favorites. Then she would run to him and ask if her guess was right.” (Judson, Abraham Lincoln: Friend of the People, 50)
Liberty & Union: “While Union lasts we have high prospects spread out before us, for us and our children—liberty first and Union afterward (says Hayne, South Carolina)—I speak another sentiment dear to every American heart—Liberty and Union, now and forever.” (Daniel Webster reply to Senator Hayne, South Carolina, 1830, cited in Ibid., 64-65)
Peace, Reconciliation: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us the strength to see in the right, let us strive on to finish the work that we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.” (Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural, 1865)
Cheer: “Cheerfulness bears the same friendly regard to the mind as to the body; it banishes all anxious care and discontent, soothes and composes the passions and keeps the soul in perpetual calm.” (Scott, Elocutions, 83)
Small and Simple Steps: “The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.” (Confucius)
Change: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” (Mahatma Gandhi)
Change, attitude: “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.” (Maya Angelou)
Lincoln’s Mind: “Lincoln’s mind was his workshop, a fellow lawyer recalled. He needed no office, no pen, no ink and paper; he could perform his chief labor by self introspection.” (Doris Kearns Goodwin, Leadership, 109)
Lincoln’s Transformation: “Even those who had heard Lincoln speak over the years were taken aback ‘When,’ they asked one another, ‘had he mastered the history of the slavery question so completely?’ Thea answer lay in the long period of works, creative introspection, research, and grinding thought that emerged in the wake of his dispiriting time in Congress and his failure to secure the high ranking position he thought he deserved after sustained party politicking. From that crucible of self-doubt had come an accelerated striving, a self-willed intellectual metaphysical and personal growth. Never again would he assume his side of the aisle held a monopoly on righteousness; never again would he deploy satire as a means to vindictively humiliate another.” (Ibid. 116)
Fear, Courage**: “When [Teddy Roosevelt] arrived in the West, he acknowledged, ’there were all kinds of things of which I was afraid at first, from grizzly bears to ‘mean’ horses and gunfighters, but by acting as if I was not afraid, I gradually ceased to be afraid.” (Ibid., on Teddy Roosevelt, 129)
Doing: “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” (Ibid., 133)
Thoughts: “What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow. Our life is the creation of our mind.” (The Dhammapada, Buddhist Scripture)
Trust, Faith: “And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’
And he replied: ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.’
So I went forth, and finding the hand of God, trod gladly into the night. And he led me toward the hills and breaking of the day in the Lone East.” (Preamble to poem “God Knows” by Minnie Louise Haskins. Recited by King George VI in Christmas 1939 Radio Broadcast)
Persistence: “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)
History: “For me, being a historian is kind of like walking down a crowded street and trying to listen to every conversation t once while simultaneously making sense of them.” (H-Civil War comment by David Prior, here)
Creative Composition: “Rautavaara [Finnish composer] believed his compositions already existed in ‘another reality,’ as he said, and his job was to just bring it into our world in one piece. ‘I firmly believe that compositions have a will of their own,’ he said, ‘even though some people smile at the concept.’” (Source)
Success: “Success means that I get to do it again tomorrow.” (Steve Albini)
Anxiety: “Anxiety is the fear that one of a pair of opposites might cancel the other out…forever. And if by and chance and any means you find out that is not so, you have an entirely new attitude toward what human beings are doing, which may be very creative, but which also may be very dangerous. You see through the game.” (Alan Watts)
Observation; Prose: “For ten years I followed the peregrine. I was possessed by it. It was a grail to me. Now it has gone. The long pursuit is over. Few peregrines are left, there will be fewer, they may not survive. Many die on their backs, clutching insanely at the sky in their last convulsions, withered and burnt away by the filthy, insidious pollen of farm chemicals. Before it is too late, I have tried to recapture the extraordinary beauty of this bird and to convey the wonder of the land he lived in, a land to me as profuse and glorious as Africa. It is a dying world, like Mars, but glowing still.” (J.A. Baker)
Duty: “Death is lighter than a feather, but Duty is heavier than a mountain” (Japanese proverb)
History’s Influence: “There are, to be sure, intriguing parallels between Tuchman’s discussion of the naval blockade successfully implemented by the risk-averse British Admiralty and Kennedy’s equally successful decision to impose a “quarantine” on Cuba. Is it possible that, in the pages of Tuchman’s narrative, Kennedy found a prescription for action?
It is tempting to say he did. As Kennedy told his brother Bobby: “I wish we could send a copy of that book to every Navy officer on every ship right now, but they probably wouldn’t read it.” At the very least, Kennedy’s remark hints at the possibility that a certain kind of historical narrative—faithful to fact and expert at exposition—can serve as a guide for the perplexed. Mostly faithful and always expert, Tuchman told a story about August 1914 that not only made sense for the story unfolding in October 1962, but perhaps also changed the ending.” (From Robert Zaretsky’s 2012 review of Tuchman’s The Gun’s of August, where he explores the book’s influence over President Kennedy’s actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, the year of the book’s release).
Persistence: “From the age of six I had a penchant for copying the form of things, and from about fifty, my pictures were frequently published; but until the age of seventy, nothing that I drew was worthy of notice. At seventy-three years, I was somewhat able to fathom the growth of plants and trees, and the structure of birds, animals, insects, and fish. Thus, when I reach eighty years, I hope to have made increasing progress, and at ninety to see further into the underlying principles of things, so that at one hundred years I will have achieved a divine state in my art, and at one hundred and ten, every dot and every stroke will be as though alive. Those of you who live long enough, bear witness that these words of mine prove not false.” (Katsushika Hokusai [artist of “The Great Wave off Kanagawa”], colophon to One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji)
Faith: “Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not.” (D&C 6:36)
Awareness: “There is a physicality to looking closely, to paying attention, and the more aware you are of what attention feels like, the more aware you become of things pulling you out of that state. Attention is the muscle. Looking closely is the application of that muscle. It can be exercised through deliberate action. Meditation is one method.” (Craig Mod, “Looking Closely is Everything”)
Attention: “Attention is the most essential mental resource for any organism.” (Daniel J. Levitin)
All Writing is Rewriting: “I have (checks clock) sixteen days to finish a movie script. This is actually fine. A thing I learned from John Rogers is to write-over. Each stage of the job - beat outline, treatment, screenplay - is built on the other. Copy the rough beat outline into a new document and rewrite and add and expand until it’s a treatment. Copy the treatment into Final Draft and rewrite and add and expand until it’s a screenplay. That way, you only start with a blank piece of paper right at the very start of the process. Every other stage comes with scaffolding and a base coat. Works for prose and comics too. Try it. Just copy the previous document into the next one and start rewriting and adapting it. Might not work for everything, but it might give you a leg up.” (Warren Ellis, Orbital Operations newsletter)
History: “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” (L.P. Hartley)
On Being Capable: “This is a long tough road we have to travel. The men that can do things are going to be sought out just as surely as the sun rises in the morning. Fake reputations, habits of glib and clever speech, and glittering surface performance are going to be discovered and kicked overboard.” For a man to make it in this war, he had to be a leader with “inexhaustible nervous energy…and iron clad determination to face discouragement, risk, and increasing work without flinching.” (Ambrose, The Supreme Commander, 62)
Myside Bias: You ratify the sacred beliefs of your own coalition–your tribe, sect, political party–and block yourself off or dismiss those of rival coalitions. You try to show how noble and wise your side is and how foolish and evil the other side is.” (Steven Pinker)
Launch into the Deep: “I’m tired of sailing my little boat | Far inside of the harbor bar | I want to be out where the big ships float | Out in the deep where the great ones are. | And should my frail craft prove too slight | For storms that sweep those wide seas o’er, | Better go down in the stirring fight | Than to drowse to death by the sheltered shore.” (Daisy Rhinehart)
Challenging Oneself: “When we go out into the middle of things, we are less likely to crash upon the shore rocks or get stuck in the mud puddles of the low tide. Shakespeare had something like this in mind when he said, ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at its flood leads on to fortune, omitted all of the voyages of our lives are bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, and we must take the current when it serves or lose our ventures.’ In other words, Shakespeare was saying, ‘Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a draught.’ The one business in life is to succeed. The great Creator and organizer of the universe does not desire that his children waste their lives in failure. Rather, he wants us to manifest our abundance in righteous accomplishment.” (Sterling Sill, Quest for Excellence, 143–44)
Muck Raking: “In John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, he tells the story of the man with a muck rake who had trained himself to look in no direction but down. He had spent his life exclusively with the things of the earth. There was an angel standing over this head with a celestial crown in his hand, offering to exchange the crown for the muck rake. But because he had never learned to look up, he disregarded the offer of the angel and continued to rake unto himself the chaff and dust of the earth. When we place limitations upon ourselves we force ourselves to look downward. It has been said that the most widespread disease in the world is the inferiority complex. One of the reasons that doubt destroys so much of our faith is that we can’t look up and down at the same time. When we rationalize and say, ‘I am just not religious or I am not cut out to be a success,’ we are headed in the direction of the mud puddles, for no one can think little and be big at the same time.” (Ibid., 144–45)
Gospel Action: “Even the word gospel begins with the word ‘go’.” (Ibid., 145)
Go and Do: “There is an interesting old legend that comes out of India. It tells of a horseman riding at night over a desert. As he crossed a dry river bed, a voice out of the darkness commanded him to halt and dismount. The horseman obeyed. The voice then told him to fill his pockets with the pebbles at his feet, which he did. Then the voice commanded him to remount and ride on and that in the morning he would be both glad and sad. As the sun came up the horseman looked at the pebbles in his pockets and he discovered that they were rubies, emeralds, diamonds, pearls, and sapphires. Then he was both glad and sad. He was glad that he had taken as many as he had, and he was sad that he had not taken a great many more.” (Ibid., 145–46)
Eisenhower and the Media: “Gen. Eisenhower struck Mr. Ramsey as a man of understanding, a skillful negotiator, conciliatory and endowed with the gift of making people who talk to him think they must be extremely intelligent and well-informed. He talks a great deal himself with the intelligence of a University Don and the fluency of a Rotarian speaker. At first he was distrusted as a military commander. The Guards and the Hampshire battalions were sent forward in a hurry without adequate supply arrangements. There was relief when General Alexander was associated with him in the high command. But he is a favourite with the correspondents because he takes them into his confidences reads them as Moulders of Public Opinion (the tones of his voice supply the capital letters!) and unlike most British generals, he thinks that News really matters.” (Hamilton Fyfe,” “Views and Reviews of Vital War Books,” The War Illustrated, Sept 17, 1943)
Home: “Home is where one starts from.” (T.S. Eliot)
Variety, Spontaneity: “Do not repeat the tactics which have gained you one victory, but let your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances.” (Sun Tzu)
Simplicity: “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage—to move in the opposite direction.” (E.F. Schumacher)
Bikes: “I love my bike. My bike is everything to me. My bike is my gym, my church, and my wheelchair. My bike is everything that I believe in going on in the Biosphere. It’s science, it’s technology, it’s the future, engineering, metallurgy - you name it, it’s right there in my bike. My bike is the most important and valuable thing that I have.” (Bill Walton)
Thinking About the Future: “Most people overestimate what they can achieve in a year and underestimate what they can achieve in ten years.” (Attributed to Roy Amara, paraphrased/recited by Bill Gates, Tony Robbins, Peter Drucker, Arthur C. Clarke, and many others)
Exponential Growth, Compounding Gains: “The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” (Albert Allen Bartlett, University of Colorado physics professor)
Compounding Gains: “One of the best illustrations of exponential growth is the legend about a peasant and the emperor of China. In the story, the peasant (sometimes said to be the inventor of chess), visits the emperor with a seemingly modest request: a chessboard with one grain of rice on the first square, then two on the second, four on the third, and so on, doubling each time. The emperor agreed to this idiosyncratic request and ordered his men to start counting out the rice grains…The request was impossible to fulfill. Doubling one grain 63 times (the number of squares on a chessboard, minus the first one that only held one grain) would mean the emperor had to give the peasant over 18 million trillion grains of rice. To grow just half of that amount, he would have needed to drain the oceans and convert every bit of land on this planet into rice fields. And that’s for half.” (Ray Kurzweil, “The Law of Accelerating Returns.” This version found here)
Good Ideas: “We like to think of our ideas as $40,000 incubators shipped directly from the factory, but in reality, they’ve been cobbled together with spare parts that happened to be sitting in the garage.” (Steven Johnson, “Where Good Ideas Come From.”)
Evolution of Ideas: “Ideas borrow, blend, subvert, develop, and bounce off other ideas.” (John Hegarty, Hegarty on Creativity)
Accelerating Innovation: “Early innovations happened slowly. It took us about 30,000 years to invent clothing and about 120,000 years to invent jewelry. It took us about 130,000 years to invent art and about 136,000 years to come up with the bow and arrow. But things began to speed up in the Upper Paleolithic period. Between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago, we developed more sophisticated tools with specialized uses—think harpoons, darts, fishing tools, and needles—early musical instruments, pottery, and the first domesticated animals. Between roughly 11,000 years and the 18th century, the pace truly accelerated. That period essentially led to the creation of civilization, with the foundations of our current world.” (Here)
Power of Imagination; Innovation: “For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind’s greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn’t have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.” (Stephen Hawking, 1993)
Privacy: “It is my ambition to be, as a private individual, abolished and voided from history…In the same sentence is my obit and epitaph too, shall be them both: He made the books and he died.” (William Faulkner)
Choice: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” (Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning)
Ikigai: “Ikigai has been portrayed as a kind of flow, an immersive experience that we have whenever we do something that we are truly passionate about and are not aware of the time passing: such as gardening, dancing, cooking, theater, learning something new, these are rewarding moments in which the mind is not distracted and an almost meditative state of intense fulfillment can be achieved.” (here)
Preparedness, Sacrifice: “The important thing is this: to be ready at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.” (Charles du Bois)
Stillness: “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” (Pascal, 1654)
Goodness: “He who stops being better, stops being good.” (Oliver Cromwell)
Notebooks: “Whenever I buy a new notebook, the first thing I do is make an ugly scrawl to prevent myself from ever mistaking it for something precious.” (here)
Enthusiasm: “You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.” (French author Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette)
Essentiality: “If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generations of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words?” (Richard Feynman, Lectures on Physics)
Atomic Sentence: “At the end of each day, I write an “atomic sentence,” a single statement that summarizes the most vital lesson about that day.” (here)
Stories Everywhere: “For walk where we will, we tread upon some story.” (Cicero)
Writing: “Had my credentials been in order I would never have become a writer. Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” (Joan Didion, “Why I Write”)
Balance, Tradition, Modernity: “[W]hen a strong wind blows, the power of tradition must be put to work. But…we cannot fly a kite if its tail is too heavy. It is of the utmost importance to strike a balance between these two inclinations; toward modernization and change, and toward tradition.” (Nishitani, On Buddhism, 36).
Once Through Method: “I’m a big proponent of ‘once through, cleanly’. You think about your idea, sketch, then put some glue in your chair and bang it out in one sitting. All of my best work happens this way: posters, collages, essays, outlines for talks, and so on. The work seems to be more cohesive and the energy more concentrated and palpable. If you sit down and what you make is bunk, you walk away, come back later and start over. You don’t keep any of what you’ve done before, you only retain the memory of what went wrong. It’s a silly method, but it works for me.” (Frank Chimero)
Libraries: “Libraries might be our last bulwark against the degradation of life and learning.” (Charles Digges, “Viva la Library!”)
The Past: “We look at the present through a rear-view mirror.” | “We marsh backwards into the future.” (Marshall McLuhan)
Questions: “Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.” (E.E. Cummings)
The Why of One’s Work: “Our mistake was the same as that of the creative person who places too much focus on How to create her work, while ignoring the Why she is creating it. Questions about How to do things improves craft and elevates form, but asking Why unearths a purpose and develops a point of view. We need to do more than hit the right note.” (Frank Chimero, The Shape of Design, 20–21)
Parenting: “We so quickly forget that people, especially children, will not willingly do what we teach them unless they are shown the joys of doing so. The things we don’t do out of necessity of responsibility we do for pleasure or love; if we wish children to read, they must know why. If we wish painters to paint, poets to write, designers to design, they must know why as well. How enables, but Why motivates, and the space between the two could be described by the gap of enthusiasm between simply understanding phonics and reading a book that one identifies with and loves.” (Ibid., 26)
Creative Blocks: “Creative people commonly lament about being ‘blocked,’ perpetually stuck and unable to produce work when necessary. Blocks spring from the imbalanced relationship of How and Why: either we have an idea, but lack the skills to execute it; or we have skills, but lack a message, idea, or purpose for the work. The most despised and common examples of creative block are the latter, because the solution to a lack of purpose is so elusive. If we are short on skill, the answer is to practice and seek outside guidance from those more able until we improve. But when we are left without something to say, we have no choice but to either go for a walk or continue suffering in front of a blank page.” (Ibid., 26–27)
Craftsmanship & Complexity: “A sunflower seed and a solar system are the same thing; they both are whole systems. I find it easier to pay attention to the complexities of the smaller than to pay attention to the complexities of the larger. That, as much as anything, is why I’m a craftsman. It’s a small discipline, but you can put an awful lot into it.” (Adam Smith, Knifemaker)
Beauty, Purpose: “Do not make something unless it is both necessary and useful; but if it is both, do not hesitate to make it beautiful.” (Shaker proverb)
Labors of Love: “Some experts believe the secret to his violins lies in their filler and varnish, which is believed to contain volcanic ash, insect wings, shrimp shells, and ‘tantalizing traces of organic compounds and could be bedroom residues, sweat, or pheromones of the master’s own breath.’ Secret recipe, indeed: each instrument was a beautiful union, where the maker was himself a material used in the construction. There is no way to describe Stradivari’s work other than as a labor of love.” (Chimero, The Shape of Design, 34)
Haiku: “Lighting one candle | with another candle– | spring evening.” (Yosa Buson, eighteenth century Japanese Haiku master; “we accept the light contained in the work of others without darkening their efforts. One candle can light another, and the light may spread without its source being diminished. We must sing in our own way, but with the contributions and influence of others, we need not sing alone.” Chimero, 38)
Self Reliance: “If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined. If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards, in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened and in complaining the rest of his life. A sturdy lad from New Hamsphire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always like a cat falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days and feels no shame in not ‘studying a profession,’ for he does not postpone his life, but lives already.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self Reliance, 1841)
Doing Nothing: “Creative people need time to sit around and do nothing.” (Austin Kleon)
Exiting Exile: “Everyone must come out of his exile in his own way.” (Martin Buber)
Going All In: “I worked at Office Depot during the day and I was in the studio really late at night sometimes. Work was getting in the way of my focusing on what I needed to do as an artist. When they fired me, I had no excuse. I had to go all in on my career.” (Janelle Monáe)
Spurn Set Routines: “I don’t like people who have their itineraries and ideas so clearly sorted out that they say, ‘Today I’ll make three visits, I’ll write four letters, and I’ll finish that book I started.’ My soul is so open to every kind of idea, taste and sentiment; it so avidly receives everything that presents itself!… And why would it turn down the pleasures that are scattered along life’s difficult path? They are so few and far between, so thin on the ground, that you’d need to be mad not to stop, and even turn away from your path, and pick up all of those that lie within reach. There’s no more attractive pleasure, in my view, than following one’s ideas wherever they lead, as the hunter pursues his game, without even trying to keep to any set route.” (Xavier de Maistre, A Journey Around My Room (1794))
Zero Draft: “It can be how you name your accumulated pages the first time they begin to have any shape at all, although they are still so messy that it would be presumptuous to call them a”first draft,” yet are clearly more organized than pure chaos. The zero draft is the point where it becomes possible to imagine, discern, a shape to your material, to see the method in your madness.” (Writing Your Diss in Fifteen Minutes a Day, 87)
Habit Building: “There is nothing magical about time passing with regard to habit formation. It doesn’t matter if it’s been twenty-one days or thirty days or three hundred days. What matters is the rate at which you perform the behaviour. You could do something twice in thirty days, or two hundred times. It’s the frequency that makes the difference.” (James Clear, Atomic Habits)
Seeing Reality: “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” (Anaïs Nin, borrowed from a Talmudic idea on dream analysis)
Lighting the World: “At my age, in this still hierarchical time, people often ask me if I’m ‘passing the torch.’ I explain that I’m keeping my torch, thank you very much–and I’m using it to light the torches of others. Because only if each of us has a torch will there be enough light.” (Gloria Steinem)
Adventure: “No, we don’t need more sleep. It’s our souls that are tired, not our bodies. We need nature. We need magic. We need adventure. We need freedom. We need truth. We need stillness. We don’t need more sleep, we need to wake up and live.” (Brooke Hampton)
Historical Commonplace Books: “Unlike modern readers, who follow the flow of a narrative from beginning to end, early modern Englishmen read in fits and starts and jumped from book to book. They broke texts into fragments and assembled them into new patterns by transcribing them in different sections of their notebooks. Then they reread the copies and rearranged the patterns while adding more excerpts. Reading and writing were therefore inseparable activities. They belonged to a continuous effort to make sense of things, for the world was full of signs: you could read your way through it; and by keeping an account of your readings, you made a book of your own, one stamped with your personality.” (Robert Darnton)
The Self: “…for no man lives in the external truth, among salts and acids, but in the warm, phantasmagoric chamber of his brain, with the painted windows and the storied walls.” (Robert Louis Stevenson)
Talent: “Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.” (Arthur Conan Doyle)
Democracy: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it … good and hard.” (H. L. Mencken)
Capitalism; Space: “It’s a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one’s safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract.” (Alan Shepard)
Obeying the Law: “No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man’s permission when we require him to obey it. Obedience to the law is demanded as a right; not asked as a favor.” (Thomas Jefferson)
Wealth: “Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence.” (John Kenneth Galbraith)
Curiosity, Learning: “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.” (Antoine de Saint Exupery)
The Presidency: “As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and a complete narcissistic moron.” (H.L. Mencken (1920))
Resources: “It is much easier to put existing resources to better use, than to develop resources where they do not exist.” (George Soros)
Honesty, Truth: “The simple step of a simple courageous man is not to partake in falsehood, not to support false actions. Let that enter the world, let it even reign in the world - but not with my help. Falsehood can hold out against much in this world, but not against art.” (Alexandr Solzhenitsyn)
Character: “I hate that man. I must get to know him better.” (Abraham Lincoln)
Action, Information, Sleep: “When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.” (Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness)
Questions: “There are no foolish questions and no man becomes a fool until he has stopped asking questions.” (Charles Proteus Steinmetz)
“Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.” (George Orwell)
Ancestors: “The man who has not anything to boast of but his illustrious ancestors is like a potato - the only good belonging to him is under ground.” (Sir Thomas Overbury)
Humility: “Be humble for you are made of earth. Be noble for you are made of stars…” (Serbian proverb)
Simplicity: ““Simple is better than complex. Complex is better than complicated. And the one you are used to is the best of them all.” (emacs developer)
Reading: “The possession of a book becomes a substitute for reading it.” (Anthony Burgess)
Reality: “Reality is that which continues to exist even when you stop believing in it.” (Philip K. Dick)
Being Pleasant: “My mother once said to me, ‘Elwood,’ (she always called me Elwood) ‘Elwood, in this world you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant.’ For years I tried smart. I recommend pleasant.” (Elwood P. Dowde, “Harvey”)
Montgomery: “We were all used to the heat; but whereas the desert was dry, Sicily was humid. I well remember an incident that occurred one day as I was driving in my open car up to the front. I saw a lorry coming towards me with a soldier apparently completely naked in the driver’s seat, wearing a silk top hat. As the lorry passed me, the driver leant out from his cab and took off his hat to me with a sweeping and gallant gesture. I just roared with laughter. However, while I was not particular about dress so long as the soldiers fought well and we won our battles, I at once decided that there were limits. When I got back to my headquarters I issued the only order I ever issued about dress in the Eighth Army; it read as follows: Top hats will not be worn in the Eighth Army.” (The Memoirs of Field Marshal Montgomery, 1958)
FDR: Soon after Franklin Roosevelt was inaugurated in 1933, a visitor assessed the stakes of his New Deal proposal. “Mr. President, if your program succeeds, you’ll be the greatest president in American history,” the visitor told him. “If it fails, you will be the worst one.” “If it fails,” Roosevelt responded, “I’ll be the last one.” (Source unknown)
Anglo-American Relations: “The difference between America and England is that Americans thing 100 years is a long time, while the English think 100 miles is a long way.” (Earle Hitchner)
Alliances: “What the Allies did together eighty years ago far surpassed anything we could have done on our own. It was a powerful illustration of how alliances–real alliances–make us stronger, a lesson that I pray we Americans never forget.” (President Biden, D-Day 80th Anniversary Celebration, Normandy, France)
Moderation: “One of the most common sayings in Japan is “Hara hachi bu,” which is repeated before or after eating and means something like “Fill your belly to 80 percent.” Ancient wisdom advises against eating until we are full. This is why Okinawans stop eating when they feel their stomachs reach 80 percent of their capacity, rather than overeating and wearing down their bodies with long digestive processes that accelerate cellular oxidation.” (Garcia, Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life)
Mental Exercise: “There is a tension between what is good for someone and what they want to do. This is because people, especially older people, like to do things as they’ve always done them. The problem is that when the brain develops ingrained habits, it doesn’t need to think anymore. Things get done quickly and efficiently on automatic pilot, often in a very advantageous way. This creates a tendency to stick to routines, and the only way of breaking these is to confront the brain with new information.” (Shlomo Breznitz, interview for Spanish television program Redes)
Change: “Presented with new information, the brain creates new connections and is revitalized. This is why it is so important to expose yourself to change, even if stepping outside your comfort zone means feeling a bit of anxiety.” (Garcia, Ikigai)
Rewiring your Brain: “You begin exercising your brain by doing a certain task for the first time,” he writes. “And at first it seems very difficult, but as you learn how to do it, the training is already working. The second time, you realize that it’s easier, not harder, to do, because you’re getting better at it. This has a fantastic effect on a person’s mood. In and of itself, it is a transformation that affects not only the results obtained, but also his or her self-image.” (Collins Hemingway and Shlomo Breznitz, Maximum Brainpower: Challenging the Brain for Health and Wisdom, quoted in Ibid.)
Mental Acuity: “Our neurons start to age while we are still in our twenties. This process is slowed, however, by intellectual activity, curiosity, and a desire to learn. Dealing with new situations, learning something new every day, playing games, and interacting with other people seem to be essential antiaging strategies for the mind. Furthermore, a more positive outlook in this regard will yield greater mental benefits.” (Garcia, Ikigai)
Stress: “The American Institute of Stress investigated this degenerative process and concluded that most health problems are caused by stress.” (Ibid.)
Consequences of Stress: “Stress has a degenerative effect over time. A sustained state of emergency affects the neurons associated with memory, as well as inhibiting the release of certain hormones, the absence of which can cause depression. Its secondary effects include irritability, insomnia, anxiety, and high blood pressure.” (Ibid.)
Idolatry: “Man is certainly crazy. He could not make a mite, and he makes gods by the dozen.” (Montaigne)
Doing the Impossible: “Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine.” (Alan Turing)
Interests: “Study hard what interests you most in the most undisciplined, irreverent, and original manner possible.” (Richard Feynman)
Politics & War: “I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.” (John Adams, 1780)
Solitude: “Hello solitude. How are you today? Come, sit with me, and I will care for you.” (Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese monk)
Art of War: “For the art of war is an art like painting, architecture, or pedagogy, and the entire cultural existence of peoples is determined to a high degree by their military organizations, which in turn are closely related to the technique of warfare, tactics, and strategy. All these things have mutual influences on one another.” (Hans Delbrück, Preface, The History of the Art of War Within the Framework of Political History, Vol. 4)
One Day at a Time: “Anyone can fight the battles of just one day. It is only when you and I add the battles of those two awful eternities, yesterday and tomorrow, that we break down. It is not the experience of today that drives us mad. It is the remorse or bitterness for something that happened yesterday or the dread of what tomorrow may bring. Let us therefore do our best to live but one day at a time.” (Richard Walker in Twenty-Four Hours A Day)
Gratitude: “As a rule, man is a fool, When it’s hot, he wants it cool; when it’s cool, he wants it hot, Always wanting what is not.” (Anonymous author; an oft-repeated poem my great-grandpa enjoyed)
Liberty and Freedom: “For there can be no salvation where there is not some sacrifice, and no national liberty in the fullest sense unless we have ourselves worked to bring it about.” (March Bloch, Strange Defeat, July-September 1940).
Leadership: “Olson says that, across his decades of work, the three foundational attributes of successful leaders remain unchanged: Good leaders mix integrity, vision and the willingness to bring people along. Harry S. Truman once characterized it similarly: “A leader has two important characteristics. First, he is going somewhere. Second, he is able to persuade other people to go with him.” (Garrett Graff, Washington Post, July 7, 2024)
Humanity: “As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time. I shall get up Sunday morning and wind the clock, as a contribution to order and steadfastness.” (E.B. White, Letter to man who “lost faith in humanity,” 1973)
Preparedness: “I am reminded of what Abraham Lincoln said when he sat on the sidelines for a long time, losing election after election and struggling to make a professional contribution. He said simply, “I will prepare, and perhaps my chance will come.” He lived long enough to learn what everyone learns—that chance always favors the prepared life.” (Howard W. Hunter, “Bind on Thy Sandals,” April 1978 General Conference).
Time: “For all of your life, whenever you’ve had a question you have been able to type that question out on a keyboard, watch it appear in a rectangular space bordered by a corporate logo, and within seconds revel in the flood of potential answers. But I still remember when typewriters were useful, the dawn of the Commodore 64, and days when a song you loved would have its moment on the radio and then disappear into the nothing.… For a young man like me, the invention of the Internet was the invention of space travel.” (Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me)
Happiness: “The secret to happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life, and elevating them to art.” (William Morris)
Optimism: “The most important decision you will ever make is to be in a good mood.” (Voltaire)
Purpose: “Military alliance, balances of power, League of Nations all in turn failed. … We have had our last chance. If we do not now devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door. The problem basically is theological and involves … improvement of human character. It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh.” (Douglas MacArthur, “Last Chance,” Time, September 10, 1945)
Discovering Something Useful: “It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.” (Eugene Ionesco, Decouvertes (1970))
Hope: “Many people seem to think it foolish, even superstitious, to believe that the world could still change for the better. And it is true that in winter it is somethings so bitingly cold that one is tempted to say, ‘What do I care if there is a summer; its warmth is no help to me now.’ Yes, evil often seems to surpass good. But then, in spite of us, and without our permission, there comes at last an end to the bitter frosts. One morning the wind turns, and there is a thaw. And so I must still have hope.” (Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh)
Patience: “Rivers know this: There is no hurry. We shall get there some day.” (A.A. Milne)
Responsibility: “You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.” (Abraham Lincoln)
Wisdom: “I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had no where else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.” (Abraham Lincoln)
Character: “Character is like a tree and reputation is like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.” (Abraham Lincoln)
Success: “Always bear in mind that your resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.” (Abraham Lincoln)
Postwar Problems: “I envy you [for] your release for a spell from the turbulent struggles to perfect the peace. Paris just now must be a depressing and maddening place. China is no bed of roses. Sufficient unto the day are the evils thereof, but each tomorrow seems to be a little more difficult.” (General George C. Marshall to Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., August 9, 1946, Nanking, China, Box 86, Folder 10, GCM)
Enjoying a Bucolic Life: “I can picture Horseshoe Farm, the restful nest of chairs under the trees on the lawn, turkeys and cattle, the twins, and the lovely prospects across the fields. You are very lucky and I hope Virginia can prevail upon you to nurse your luck for quite a period before returning to the struggle to help your fellow men to help themselves in spite of themselves. Give her my love and with my affectionate regards, believe me always, George C. Marshall.” (Speaking of Stettinius’ Horseshoe Farm–General George C. Marshall to Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., August 9, 1946, Nanking, China, Box 86, Folder 10, GCM)
Mistakes: “If you dig a hole and its in the wrong place, digging it deeper isn’t going to help.” (Seymour Chwast, The Left Handed Designer).
Legacy: “No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone’s life is only the core of their actual existence.” (Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man)
Just Do It. “You pile up enough tomorrows, and you’ll find you are left with nothing but a lot of empty yesterdays.” (Meredith Wilson)

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About Hi, my name is Carson Teuscher. I’m a graduate of Ohio State University with a Ph.D. in Military History. Professionally, I spend much of my time

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