More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Talk about an ideal democracy! In the realm of time there is no aristocracy of wealth, and no aristocracy of intellect.
We never shall have any more time. We have, and we have always had, all the time there is.
As I have previously said, the chief beauty about the constant supply of time is that you cannot waste it in advance. The next year, the next day, the next hour are lying ready for you, as perfect, as unspoilt, as if you had never wasted or misapplied a single moment in all your career.
Beware of undertaking too much at the start. Be content with quite a little. Allow for accidents. Allow for human nature, especially your own.
He begins his business functions with reluctance, as late as he can, and he ends them with joy, as early as he can.
If a man makes two-thirds of his existence subservient to one-third, for which admittedly he has no absolutely feverish zest, how can he hope to live fully and completely? He cannot.
One of the chief things which my typical man has to learn is that the mental faculties are capable of a continuous hard activity; they do not tire like an arm or a leg. All they want is change—not rest, except in sleep.
On hundreds of suburban stations every morning you see men calmly strolling up and down platforms while railway companies unblushingly rob them of time, which is more than money.
The tired feeling hangs heavy over the mighty suburbs of London like a virtuous and melancholy cloud, particularly in winter.
Hence I iterate and reiterate: Start quietly, unostentatiously.
We do not reflect. I mean that we do not reflect upon genuinely important things; upon the problem of our happiness, upon the main direction in which we are going, upon what life is giving to us, upon the share which reason has (or has not) in determining our actions, and upon the relation between our principles and our conduct.
And they have attained it by realising that happiness does not spring from the procuring of physical or mental pleasure, but from the development of reason and the adjustment of conduct to principles.
All I urge is that a life in which conduct does not fairly well accord with principles is a silly life; and that conduct can only be made to accord with principles by means of daily examination, reflection, and resolution.
all martyrs are happy, because their conduct and their principles agree.
Nothing is humdrum.
The first is the terrible danger of becoming that most odious and least supportable of persons—a prig.
Another danger is the danger of being tied to a programme like a slave to a chariot.
Let the pace of the first lap be even absurdly slow, but let it be as regular as possible.
