Eric Kalnins > Eric's Quotes

“It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, Even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth. It is to build a house with affection, Even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house. It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, Even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.”
― David Michie, The Dalai Lama's Cat and the Art of Purring

“Spontaneous Comprehension We never say, “Let me see what that thing is that suffers.” You cannot see by enforcement, by discipline. You must look with interest, with spontaneous comprehension. Then you will see that the thing we call suffering, pain, the thing that we avoid, and the discipline, have all gone. As long as I have no relationship to the thing as outside me, the problem is not; the moment I establish a relationship with it outside me, the problem is. As long as I treat suffering as something outside—I suffer because I lost my brother, because I have no money, because of this or that—I establish a relationship to it and that relationship is fictitious. But if I am that thing, if I see the fact, then the whole thing is transformed, it all has a different meaning. Then there is full attention, integrated attention and that which is completely regarded is understood and dissolved, and so there is no fear and therefore the word sorrow is non-existent.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, The Book of Life: Daily Meditations with Krishnamurti

“It’s far better that we become pragmatic and adaptable—able to do what we need to do anywhere, anytime. The place to do your work, to live the good life, is here.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic: THE PHENOMENAL WORLDWIDE BESTSELLER: 3 MILLION COPIES SOLD

“Understand the Actual It is really not complex, though it may be arduous. You see, we don’t start with the actual, with the fact, with what we are thinking, doing, desiring; we start with assumptions, or with ideals, which are not actualities, and so we are led astray. To start with facts, and not with assumptions, we need close attention; and every form of thinking not originating from the actual is a distraction. That’s why it is so important to understand what is actually taking place both within and around one.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, The Book of Life: Daily Meditations with Krishnamurti

“It is too much to hope that I shall keep up my success. I don’t ask for that. All I shall do is my best – and hope.”
― Ian Woodward, Audrey Hepburn: Fair Lady of the Screen

“Many words have been spoken by Plato, Zeno, Chrysippus, Posidonius, and by a whole host of equally excellent Stoics. I’ll tell you how people can prove their words to be their own—by putting into practice what they’ve been preaching.” —SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 108.35; 38”
― Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic: THE PHENOMENAL WORLDWIDE BESTSELLER: 3 MILLION COPIES SOLD

“As Ben Franklin’s proverb put it: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic: THE PHENOMENAL WORLDWIDE BESTSELLER: 3 MILLION COPIES SOLD

“This can be swiftly taught in very few words: virtue is the only good; there is no certain good without virtue; and virtue resides in our nobler part, which is the rational one. And what can this virtue be? True and steadfast judgment. For from this will arise every mental impulse, and by it every appearance that spurs our impulses will be rendered clear.” —SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 71.32”
― Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic: THE PHENOMENAL WORLDWIDE BESTSELLER: 3 MILLION COPIES SOLD

“You become the sum of your actions, and as you do, what flows from that—your impulses—reflect the actions you’ve taken. Choose wisely.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic: THE PHENOMENAL WORLDWIDE BESTSELLER: 3 MILLION COPIES SOLD

“Just as the nature of rational things has given to each person their rational powers, so it also gives us this power—just as nature turns to its own purpose any obstacle or any opposition, sets its place in the destined order, and co-opts it, so every rational person can convert any obstacle into the raw material for their own purpose.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 8.35”
― Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic: THE PHENOMENAL WORLDWIDE BESTSELLER: 3 MILLION COPIES SOLD

“Thought is verbalized sensation; thought is the response of memory, the word, the experience, the image. Thought is transient, changing, impermanent, and it is seeking permanency. So thought creates the thinker, who then becomes the permanent; he assumes the role of the censor, the guide, the controller, the molder of thought. This illusory permanent entity is the product of thought, of the transient. This entity is thought; without thought he is not. The thinker is made up of qualities; his qualities cannot be separated from himself. The controller is the controlled, he is merely playing a deceptive game with himself. Till the false is seen as the false, truth is not.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, The Book of Life: Daily Meditations with Krishnamurti

“A good person is invincible, for they don’t rush into contests in which they aren’t the strongest. If you want their property, take it—take also their staff, profession, and body. But you will never compel what they set out for, nor trap them in what they would avoid. For the only contest the good person enters is that of their own reasoned choice. How can such a person not be invincible?” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 3.6.5–7”
― Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic: THE PHENOMENAL WORLDWIDE BESTSELLER: 3 MILLION COPIES SOLD

“How can there be a fusion of the thinker with his thoughts? Not through the action of will, nor through discipline, nor through any form of effort, control, or concentration, nor through any other means. The use of a means implies an agent who is acting, does it not? As long as there is an actor, there will be a division. The fusion takes place only when the mind is utterly still without trying to be still. There is this stillness, not when the thinker comes to an end, but only when thought itself has come to an end. There must be freedom from the response of conditioning, which is thought. Each problem is solved only when idea, conclusion, is not; conclusions, idea, thought, are the agitations of the mind. How can there be understanding when the mind is agitated? Earnestness must be tempered with the swift play of spontaneity. You will find, if you have heard all that has been said, that truth will come in moments when you are not expecting it. If I may say so, be open, sensitive, be fully aware of what is from moment to moment. Don’t build around yourself a wall of impregnable thought. The bliss of truth comes when the mind is not occupied with its own activities and struggles.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, The Book of Life: Daily Meditations with Krishnamurti

“Who wants a ciggy?”
― Ian Woodward, Audrey Hepburn: Fair Lady of the Screen

“Inwardly, we ought to be different in every respect, but our outward dress should blend in with the crowd.” —SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 5.2”
― Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic: THE PHENOMENAL WORLDWIDE BESTSELLER: 3 MILLION COPIES SOLD

“As long as there is the experiencer remembering the experience, truth is not. Truth is not something to be remembered, stored up, recorded, and then brought out. What is accumulated is not truth. The desire to experience creates the experiencer, who then accumulates and remembers. Desire makes for the separation of the thinker from his thought; the desire to become, to experience, to be more or to be less, makes for division between the experiencer and the experience. Awareness of the ways of desire is self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is the beginning of meditation.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, The Book of Life: Daily Meditations with Krishnamurti

“It’s ruinous for the soul to be anxious about the future and miserable in advance of misery, engulfed by anxiety that the things it desires might remain its own until the very end. For such a soul will never be at rest—by longing for things to come it will lose the ability to enjoy present things.” —SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 98.5b–6a”
― Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic: THE PHENOMENAL WORLDWIDE BESTSELLER: 3 MILLION COPIES SOLD

“If you are in contact with anything, with your wife, with your children, with the sky, with the clouds, with any fact, the moment thought interferes with it you lose contact. Thought springs from memory. Memory is the image, and from there you look and therefore there is a separation between the observer and the observed. You have to understand this very deeply. It is this separation of the observer from the observed that makes the observer want more experience, more sensations, and so he is everlastingly pursuing, seeking. It has to be completely and totally understood that as long as there is an observer, the one that is seeking experience, the censor, the entity that evaluates, judges, condemns, there is no immediate contact with what is. When you have pain, physical pain, there is direct perception; there is not the observer who is feeling the pain; there is only pain. Because there is no observer there is immediate action. There is not the idea and then action, but there is only action when there is pain, because there is a direct physical contact. The pain is you; there is pain. As long as this is not completely understood, realized, explored, and felt deeply, as long as it is not wholly grasped, not intellectually, not verbally, that the observer is the observed, all life becomes conflict, a contradiction between opposing desires, the “what should be” and the “what is.” You can do this only if you are aware whether you are looking at it as an observer, when you look at a flower or a cloud or anything.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, The Book of Life: Daily Meditations with Krishnamurti

“Instead of asking who has realized or what God is, why not give your whole attention and awareness to what is? Then you will find the unknown, or rather it will come to you. If you understand what is the known, you will experience that extraordinary silence that is not induced, not enforced, that creative emptiness in which alone reality can enter. It cannot come to that which is becoming, which is striving; it can only come to that which is being, which understands what is. Then you will see that reality is not in the distance; the unknown is not far off; it is in what is. As the answer to a problem is in the problem, so reality is in what is; if we can understand it, then we shall know truth.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, The Book of Life: Daily Meditations with Krishnamurti

“It is essential for you to remember that the attention you give to any action should be in due proportion to its worth, for then you won’t tire and give up, if you aren’t busying yourself with lesser things beyond what should be allowed.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 4.32b”
― Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic: THE PHENOMENAL WORLDWIDE BESTSELLER: 3 MILLION COPIES SOLD

“It’s just as well that bicycles don’t suffer from inferiority complexes!’ cracked Audrey.”
― Ian Woodward, Audrey Hepburn: Fair Lady of the Screen

“The Paris couturier, Hubert de Givenchy, who sketched all Audrey’s dresses for Funny Face and who designed her personal wardrobe, called her ‘the perfect model’.”
― Ian Woodward, Audrey Hepburn: Fair Lady of the Screen

“When asked about the ‘old’ Audrey Hepburn, the actress grew thoughtful. ‘I’ve often been depressed and deeply disappointed in myself,’ she confessed. ‘I hated myself at certain periods. I was too tall, or maybe just plain too ugly. I couldn’t seem to handle any of my problems or cope with people I met. If you want to get psychological, you can say my determination and “definiteness” stems from underlying feelings of insecurity and inferiority. I found the only way to get the better of them was by putting my foot down, by adopting a forceful, concentrated drive.”
― Ian Woodward, Audrey Hepburn: Fair Lady of the Screen

“I don’t think your insecurity ever disappears. Sometimes I think the more successful you become the less secure you feel. This is kind of frightening, really.”
― Ian Woodward, Audrey Hepburn: Fair Lady of the Screen

“With a score that included such imperishable tunes as ‘S’Wonderful’, ‘He Loves and She Loves’, ‘Bonjour Paris!’, ‘Clap Yo’ Hands’, ‘Let’s Kiss and Make Up’, and the title song, ‘Funny Face’, it was a musical which really sang. And, in ‘How Long Has This Been Going On?’, Audrey’s glorious rendition made this classic ballad uniquely intimate, lyrical and affecting. Here, as in her other numbers, Audrey staked her claim to be considered the most entrancing ‘non-singer’ in the history of the art.”
― Ian Woodward, Audrey Hepburn: Fair Lady of the Screen

“Movie composer Henry Mancini, stimulated by Audrey to write ‘Moon River’ and ‘Charade’ and ‘Two for the Road’, always maintained that if you listened carefully to these three songs you could almost determine who inspired them. They were all imbued, he said, with Audrey’s inimitable wistfulness – ‘a kind of slight sadness’.”
― Ian Woodward, Audrey Hepburn: Fair Lady of the Screen

“Her depression finally lifted, observed friends and colleagues, soon after some scenes were filmed in a leper colony, and following a visit to a mental institution. So she was childless, she mused, but how could that compare to the misery that these people were enduring? ‘After looking inside an insane asylum, visiting a leper colony, talking to missionary workers, and watching operations, I felt very enriched,’ said Audrey. ‘I developed a new kind of inner peacefulness. A calmness. Things that once seemed so important weren’t important any longer.”
― Ian Woodward, Audrey Hepburn: Fair Lady of the Screen

“After a rainstorm on a brilliant Sunday morning, 17 January 1960, at Lucerne’s Municipal Maternity Clinic, Audrey gave birth to a sturdy, well-made son. He weighed nine and a half pounds, and they called him Sean. The Christian name was chosen because it was the Irish version of Audrey’s half-brother’s name, Ian, and because it meant ‘Gift of God’, the significance of which was not lost on all who knew the baby’s mother.”
― Ian Woodward, Audrey Hepburn: Fair Lady of the Screen

“Moon River’ was written to explain that Audrey/Holly was really a yearning country girl; it becomes an anachronism, therefore, to have it sung by a male singer, although Danny Williams’s version later became a top-of-the-hit-parade best-seller. It was Audrey’s rendition of the song, in fact, which first convinced many critics that they were dealing with no ordinary talent. The cigarette-girl extra in the British quickie had reached the Olympian heights and become a Hollywood superstar; most agreed that it would have been hard to think of any other actress who could have suggested as convincingly as Audrey did the desperate frailty beneath Holly’s smart façade.”
― Ian Woodward, Audrey Hepburn: Fair Lady of the Screen

“The only occasion on film when a profanity passed from her lips, in fact, came in Two for the Road, when she twice accused Albert Finney of being a bastard. Its impact was all the greater because it was completely at odds with the ‘decent’ Audrey Hepburn image.”
― Ian Woodward, Audrey Hepburn: Fair Lady of the Screen