I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific.
— Lily Tomlin, American actress
Everything has been figured out, except how to live.
— Jean-Paul Sartre, French philosopher
My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people’s
— Oscar Wilde
Always go too far, because that’s where you’ll find the truth.
— Albert Camus
Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness.
— Ayn Rand
No matter what their delusions are, parents do not really know their children
— Unknown
I keep on making what I can’t do yet in order to learn to be able to do it
— Van Gogh
What I want and set as my goal is damned difficult, and yet I don’t believe I’m aiming too high
— Van Gogh
I feel a power in me that I must develop, a fire that I may not put out but must fan, although I don’t know to what outcome it will lead me.
— Van Gogh
What I advise you to do is, not to be unhappy before the crisis comes
— Seneca
What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless; well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age
— Sylvia Plath
What is it the slightly older people want from the slightly younger people? They want credit for having survived so long, and often imaginatively, under difficult conditions. Slightly younger people are intolerably stingy about giving them credit for that.
— Kurt Vonnegut, If This Isn’t Nice What Is
And I suppose you will all want money and true love, among other things. I will tell you how to make money: Work very hard. I will tell you how to win love: Wear nice clothing and smile all the time. Learn the words to all the latest songs.
— Kurt Vonnegut, If This Isn’t Nice What Is
That is partly why the stories are so compelling: they are individual, inimitable, highly specific to a given person at a given point in time. The sparks are, in a very real sense, mysterious, sometimes even to the people ignited by them
— Matthew Syed, Bounce
The desire to be loved is the last illusion. Give it up and you will be free.
― Margaret Atwood
That’s the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.
— Charles Bukowski
People are strange: They are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice.
― Charles Bukowski
I wasn’t lonely. I experienced no self-pity. I was just caught up in a life in which I could find no meaning.
― Charles Bukowski
It is essential for a man to strive with all his heart, and to understand that it is difficult even to reach the average if he does not have the intention of surpassing others in whatever he does.
— Budo Shoshinshu
In important matters, a ‘strong’ effort usually results in only mediocre results. Whenever we are attempting anything truly worthwhile our effort must be as if our life is at stake, just as if we were under a physical attack! It is this extraordinary effort—an effort that drives us beyond what we thought we were capable of—that ensures victory in battle and success in life’s endeavors.
— Flashing Steel: Mastering Eishin-Ryu Swordsmanship
There is no normal, Evelyn. A ‘normal person’ is what is left after society has squeezed out all unconventional opinions and aspirations out of a human being.
— Sylvia Plath
Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.
— Franz Kafka
There’s some games you don’t get to play unless you’re all in. And the thing that’s so interesting about being alive- is that you’re all in. No matter what you do, you’re all in. This is going to kill you. So, I think, you might as well play the most magnificent game you can, while you’re waiting. Because, do you have anything better to do?
— Dr. Jordan Peterson
I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no ‘brief candle’ for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
— George Bernard Shaw
If you want to fix your life just stop treating it like an index fund. Every decision you make you should be all in on. Don’t spread your bets, the kingdom of heaven isn’t achieved through diversification. You should be systemically destroying optionality, every door you don’t take you should slam shut, every bet you make should kill you if you lose it, think about anthropic leverage, you don’t want to be alive to see a world that isn’t the one you bet on.
— Unknown
Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it’s yours.
— Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery–isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is
— Charles Bukowski
I found out that life, for all its amazing possibilities, very often does not make sense. And at least as often, is not fair. Today, it’s absolutely not the fair world you’re being dealt with.There are many ways to deal with an unfair world. One may tune out and run away. One may get angry. One may fight. Or one could do what I ultimately did - accept the world for what it is, work hard to exploit the opportunities it presents, and try to do so in as just a manner as possible.
— Dr. Michael J Burry.
I know quite clearly what I want out of my life. Life and my emotions are the only things I am conscious of. I love the consciousness of life and I want as much of it as I can get. But the span of one’s life is limited. What comes after death no one knows. Nor do I care. Since, therefore, I cannot increase the content of life by increasing its duration, I will increase it by increasing its intensity. Art, music, poetry and everything else … I do have this one purpose — increasing the intensity of my consciousness of life.
— Homi Bhabha
Often where succeeding to do a thing, is very hard, trying to do it is much easier.
No! Not well! You haven’t won yet! Shut up and do the impossible!
And yet—you can’t be setting out to try to solve the problem. You can’t be setting out to make an effort. You have to be setting out to win. You can’t be saying to yourself, And now I’m going to do my best. You have to be saying to yourself, And now I’m going to figure out how to get out of the Box—or reduce consciousness to non-mysterious parts, or whatever.
I say again: You must really intend to solve the problem. If in your heart you believe the problem really is impossible—or if you believe that you will fail—then you won’t hold yourself to a high enough standard. You’ll only be trying for the sake of trying. You’ll sit down—conduct a mental search—try to be creative and brainstorm a little—look over all the solutions you generated—conclude that none of them work—and say, Oh well. It’s only when you want, above all else, to actually flip the switch—without quotation and without consolation prizes just for trying—that you will actually put in the effort to actually maximize the probability.Tsuyoku naritai! I’ll always run as fast as I can, even if I pull ahead, I’ll keep on running; and someone, someday, will surpass me; but even though I fall behind, I’ll always run as fast as I can.
Your goal is not to do better, to try desperately, or even to try extraordinarily.
Your goal is to get out of the box.
— Eliezer Yudkowsky
OK, now let’s have some fun. Let’s talk about sex. Let’s talk about women. Freud said he didn’t know what women wanted. I know what women want. They want a whole lot of people to talk to. What do they want to talk about? They want to talk about everything.What do men want? They want a lot of pals, and they wish people wouldn’t get so mad at them. Why are so many people getting divorced today? It’s because most of us don’t have extended families anymore. It used to be that when a man and a woman got married, the bride got a lot more people to talk to about everything. The groom got a lot more pals to tell dumb jokes to.A few Americans, but very few, still have extended families. The Navahos. The Kennedys. But most of us, if we get married nowadays, are just one more person for the other person. The groom gets one more pal, but it’s a woman. The woman gets one more person to talk to about everything, but it’s a man. When a couple has an argument, they may think it’s about money or power or sex, or how to raise the kids, or whatever. What they’re really saying to each other, though, without realizing it, is this: “You are not enough people!”
I met a man in Nigeria one time, an Ibo who has six hundred relatives he knew quite well. His wife had just had a baby, the best possible news in any extended family.They were going to take it to meet all its relatives, Ibos of all ages and sizes and shapes. It would even meet other babies, cousins not much older than it was. Everybody who was big enough and steady enough was going to get to hold it, cuddle it, gurgle to it, and say how pretty it was, or handsome. Wouldn’t you have loved to be that baby?
— Kurt Vonnegut