149 Quotes Tagged: self-improvement

self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice.

Such is the strength of the burden of habit. Here I have the power to be but do not wish it. There I wish to be but lacks the power. On both grounds, I'm in misery.

Sometimes we have to soak ourselves in the tears and fears of the past to water our future gardens.

Big Idea
Your days are your life in miniature. As you live your hours, so you create your years. As you live your days, so you craft your life. What you do today is actually creating your future. The words you speak, the thoughts you think, the food you eat and the actions you take are defining your destiny — shaping who you are becoming and what your life will stand for. Small choices lead to giant consequences over time. There’s no such thing as an unimportant day.

...the soreness of growth is so much less expensive than the devastating costs of regret

We first make our habits, then our habits make us.

Because I have no natural gifts, shall I on that account give up my discipline? Far be it from me! Epictetus will not be better than Socrates, but if only I am not worse, that suffices me. For I shall not be a Milo, either, and yet I do not neglect my body, nor a Croesus, and yet I do not neglect my property, nor, in a word, is there any other field in which we give up the appropriate discipline merely from despair of attaining the highest.

You open your heart knowing that there’s a chance it may be broken one day and in opening your heart, you experience a love and joy that you never dreamed possible. You find that being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure that’s so real it scares you.

Like everyone else, you want to learn the way to win, but never to accept the way to lose, to accept defeat, to learn to die is to be liberated from it. So when tomorrow comes, you must free your ambitious mind, and learn the art of dying.

The greatest lesson of life is that you are responsible for your life.

I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, 'Where’s the self-help section?' She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.

If you argue and rankle and contradict, you may achieve a victory sometimes; but it will be an empty victory because you will never get your opponent's good will.

If I knew your thoughts, I would know what you are, for your thoughts make you who you are. By changing our thoughts, we can change our lives.

"Life is a river," a wise friend told me. "It's flowing. You're never at the same place twice."

You only grow when you are alone.