David > David's Quotes

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Complaining does not work as a strategy. We all have finite time and energy. Any time we spend whining is unlikely to help us achieve our goals. And it won't make us happier.”
― Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

“It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.”
― Seneca, The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters

“For what prevents us from saying that the happy life is to have a mind that is free, lofty, fearless and steadfast - a mind that is placed beyond the reach of fear, beyond the reach of desire, that counts virtue the only good, baseness the only evil, and all else but a worthless mass of things, which come and go without increasing or diminishing the highest good, and neither subtract any part from the happy life nor add any part to it?
A man thus grounded must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters

“How do you defeat terrorism? Don’t be terrorized.”
― Salman Rushdie, Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002

“A Stoic is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into transformation, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking.”
― Taleb Nassim Nicholas

“Maximum remedium est irae mora.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca