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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Ryan Holiday
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April 24 - April 30, 2021
Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner. To understand all is to forgive all. To love all is to be at peace with all, including yourself.
L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux. What’s essential is invisible to the eye.
A spoiled, lazy existence is the manifestation of spiritual emptiness.
we have to be active for the stillness to have any meaning.
Life is hard. Fortune is fickle. We can’t afford to be weak. We can’t afford to be fragile. We must strengthen our bodies as the physical vessel for our minds and spirit, subj...
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Churchill replied, “Conservation of energy. Never stand up when you can sit down, and never sit down when you can lie down.”
the other four lessons from Churchill’s remarkable life were to aim high; to never allow mistakes or criticism to get you down; to waste no energy on grudges, duplicity, or infighting; and to make room for joy.)
Churchill himself would write that every prophet must be forced into the wilderness—where they undergo solitude, deprivation, reflection, and meditation. It’s from this physical ordeal he said that “psychic dynamite” is made.
Epicurus once said that the wise will accomplish three things in their life: leave written works behind them, be financially prudent and provide for the future, and cherish country living.
As they say, the body keeps score. If we don’t take care of ourselves physically, if we don’t align ourselves properly, it doesn’t matter how strong we are mentally or spiritually.
a good routine is not only a source of great comfort and stability, it’s the platform from which stimulating and fulfilling work is possible.
nightmare. They know that order is a prerequisite of excellence and that in an unpredictable world, good habits are a safe haven of certainty.
“The repetition itself becomes the important thing,” he says, “it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.”
Rafael Nadal explained, “If it were superstition, why would I keep doing the same thing over and over whether I win or lose? It’s a way of placing myself in a match, ordering my surroundings to match the order I seek in my head.”
The purpose of ritual isn’t to win the gods over to our side (though that can’t hurt!). It’s to settle our bodies (and our minds) down when Fortune is our opponent on the other side of the net.
A master is in control. A master has a system. A master turns the ordinary into the sacred. And so must we.
In short, mental and spiritual independence matter little if the things we own in the physical world end up owning us.
We don’t need to get rid of all our possessions, but we should constantly question what we own, why we own it, and whether we could do without.
If a man can reduce his needs to zero,” he said, “he is truly free: there is nothing that can be taken from him and nothing anyone can do to hurt him.” To that we would add, “And he or she can also be still.”
Start by walking around your house and filling up trash bags and boxes with everything you don’t use. Think of it as clearing more room for your mind and your body. Give yourself space. Give your mind a rest. Want to have less to be mad about? Less to covet or be triggered by? Give more away.
The memory is what’s important. The experience itself is what matters. You can access that anytime you want, and no thief can ever deprive you of it.
“This is what happens,” he wrote to himself and every one of us, “to those who leave the solitary and contemplative life and choose to live in cities among people full of countless evils.”
It is difficult to think clearly in rooms filled with other people. It’s difficult to understand yourself if you are never by yourself.
People don’t have enough silence in their lives because they don’t have enough solitude.
If solitude is the school of genius, as the historian Edward Gibbon put it, then the crowded, busy world is the purgatory of the idiot.
as we approach twenty or so hours without sleep, we are as cognitively impaired as a drunk person. Our brains respond more slowly and our judgment is significantly impaired.
“Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death. The higher the interest rate and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.”
The greats—they protect their sleep because it’s where the best state of mind comes from.
In Greek, “leisure” is rendered as scholé—that is, school. Leisure historically meant simply freedom from the work needed to survive, freedom for intellectual or creative pursuits. It was learning and study and the pursuit of higher things.
When you defer and delay, interest is accumulating. The bill still comes due . . . and it will be even harder to afford then than it will be right now.
Stillness is not an excuse to withdraw from the affairs of the world. Quite the opposite—it’s a tool to let you do more good for more people.
Will we fall short of our own standards? Yes. When this happens, we don’t need to whip ourselves, as Clamence did, we must simply let it instruct and teach us, as all injuries do.
One of the simplest and most accessible entry points into stillness is gratitude.
