Quotes I've found interesting

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

Joan Didion,   Slouching Towards Bethlehem

When so much is being thrown at you, when there is so much you could be thinking about or doing, the strength to tune it out and do the one thing that must be done is essential.

Ryan Holiday,   Daily Stoic Email, 4/16/2021

I consider myself to be a man of principle. But, what man does not? Even the cutthroat, I have noticed, considers his actions "moral" after a fashion.

Brandon Sanderson,   Mistborn

If you’re going a thousand miles an hour, if you see everything as a problem to be solved, what kind of life is that? Especially in a world where time once past can never be recovered, where everything is so fleeting, it’s a terrible shame to waste it.

Ryan Holiday,   Daily Stoic Email, 3/31/2022

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

In every situation, you can find a better story to tell yourself about the person who cut you off in traffic, about the cashier in the checkout line you’re stuck in, about the email you still haven’t gotten a reply to, about the player who isn’t performing the way you need them to.  You just need to be aware enough of the circumstance and of your mind’s own tendency to react, in order to consider other options, to see other handles, to ask, “is this the only story?”

Ryan Holiday,   Daily Stoic Email, 4/14/2022

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

Terry Brooks,   The Last Druid

A very small part of an historical piece of fiction I stumbled upon: the hero goes through a prison. He crosses path with a very secondary character locked behind bars that say to him: "Hero, I envy you to go on adventures while I rot here in prison with a life sentence. I deserved it but now my life is useless, I'll spend it here in this small cell, there's no point to it." Poor man. He can't have a family, accumulate wealth or be useful to his community. The hero then tranquillises him: "Don't worry friend, because even in prison you can still practice and live a virtuous life."

@aka457,   Reddit

Life without design is erratic.

Seneca  

You also have a duty to your future self to release the project. Every time you don't release a project, you're telling yourself that you’re the kind of person who doesn't ship. Tell yourself that enough, and you'll start to believe it. Trust me, it's hard to unwind. Possible! But hard.

Aaron Francis,   The ReadME Project