Stillness is the Key

by Ryan Holiday

It was a habit of Leonardo da Vinci’s to write little fables to himself in his notebooks.

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.

Thomas à Kempis’s line In omnibus requiem quaesivi, et nusquam inveni nisi in angulo cum libro—“Everywhere I have sought peace and not found it, except in a corner with a book.”

We must be disciplined about our discipline and moderate in our moderation.

You can’t run away from your choices—you can only fix them with better choices.