Ryan Holiday Quotes

In failure or adversity, it’s so easy to hate. Hate defers blame. It makes someone else responsible. It’s a distraction too; we don’t do much else when we’re busy getting revenge or investigating the wrongs that have supposedly been done to us.

Watch the stars in their courses and imagine yourself running alongside them. Think constantly on the changes of the elements into each other, for such thoughts wash away the dust of earthly life.” — MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 7.47

Titles feed the ego. Effort feeds the soul.

We have to get better at thinking, deliberately and intentionally, about the big questions. On the complicated things. On understanding what’s really going on with a person, or a situation, or with life itself.

The only guarantee, ever, is that things will go wrong. The only thing we can use to mitigate this is anticipation. Because the only variable we control completely is ourselves.

One of the things that separates us from other people is our ability to be strict and self-disciplined.

Where other people are fine making excuses or taking shortcuts, we are not.

Where other people wing it or do what’s easiest, taking the path of least resistance, we don’t.

When people ask where we are, what we’re doing, how that “situation” is coming along, the answer should be clear: We’re working on it. We’re getting closer. When setbacks come, we respond by working twice as hard.

There is nothing worth doing that is not scary. There is no one who has achieved greatness without wrestling with their own doubts, anxieties, limitations, and demons.

5 Habits That Are Killing Your Productivity:

1. You don’t wake up early (Marcus Aurelius)
2. You focus on what’s outside your control (Epictetus)
3. You don’t know how to say “no” (Seneca)
4. You’re in the wrong crowd (Marcus Aurelius)
5. You think you’ll live forever (Seneca)

To prevent becoming overwhelmed by the world around us, we must, as the ancients practiced, learn how to limit our passions and their control over our lives. It takes skill and discipline to bat away the pests of bad perceptions, to separate reliable signals from deceptive ones, to filter out prejudice, expectation, and fear. But it’s worth it, for what’s left is truth. While others are excited or afraid, we will remain calm and imperturbable. We will see things simply and straightforwardly, as they truly are — neither good nor bad.

Failure shows us the way — by showing us what isn’t the way.

Remember that this moment is not your life, it’s just a moment in your life. Focus on what is in front of you, right now. Ignore what it “represents” or it “means” or “why it happened to you.

Knowledge — self-knowledge in particular — is freedom.

All great victories, be they in politics, business, art, or seduction, involved resolving vexing problems with a potent cocktail of creativity, focus, and daring. When you have a goal, obstacles are actually teaching you how to get where you want to go — carving you a path. “The Things which hurt,” Benjamin Franklin wrote, “instruct.

Success breeds softness.

It also breeds fear: We become addicted to our creature comforts. And then we become afraid of losing them.