Quotes I've found interesting

This is what you deserve. You could be good today, but instead you choose tomorrow.

Marcus Aurelius,   @dailystoic

Don't just say that you have read books.  Show that through them you have learned to think better.

Epictetus  

We are wrong to think that death is ahead of us. Much of our life has already passed. The years we have lived so far are in death's hands.

Seneca,   Moral Letters 1

We do not find virtue in a man by the quality of his circumstances, but the quality of his actions.

Unknown  

Excess in anything becomes a fault.

Seneca  

You deserve moments like that. Moments where you watch the snow fall. Moments where you sit quietly with a book. Moments where you look out the train window, not on a conference call, not checking email, not wondering how long until you arrive in the city, but a moment to check in with yourself, to think about your life and what you want to do with it. Moments with loved ones. Moments where you are grateful, connected, happy, creative, in the zone—doing whatever it is that you do best.  When the Stoics talk about stillness, they aren’t talking about some abstract notion. They are talking about maybe the most important thing you can be doing in your life. They are saying that all the “work” you are doing, all the thoughts you’re expending trying to get ahead, trying to force a breakthrough, are pointless.  The real way to charge ahead is to slow down. To clear your mind. To rejoice in perfect stillness, free of the future and the past, fully present and locked in. You can do it. You deserve that.

Ryan Holiday,   Daily Stoic Email, 4/23/2021

Small things were important. Seconds were small things, and if you heaped enough of those on top of one another, they became a man's life.

Brandon Sanderson,   Towers of Midnight

...life deals out unexpected joys and sorrows, and we can but treasure or suffer each.

Terry Brooks,   The Last Druid

Character - the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life - is the source from which self-respect springs.

Joan Didion,   Slouching Towards Bethlehem

We are all victims of our lives, and we cannot change what we do in the aftermath; we can only try to make up for it. Nor can we change the minds of all those who have come to see us as they wrongly believe us to be. Some can never forget. Some beliefs are fixed in stone.

Terry Brooks,   The Last Druid