Stillness Is the Key Quotes

“It is difficult to think clearly in rooms filled with other people. It’s difficult to understand yourself if you are never by yourself. It’s difficult to have much in the way of clarity and insight if your life is a constant party and your home is a construction site.”
― Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key

“artista está presente. Y esa quietud es el origen de su excepcionalidad.”
― Ryan Holiday, La quietud es la clave

“Of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all.”
― Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key: An Ancient Strategy for Modern Life

“Build a life that you don't need to escape from.”
― Ryan Holiday, Stillness Is the Key

“Work will not set you free. It will kill you if you're not careful.”
― Ryan Holiday, Stillness Is the Key

“In an unpredictable world, good habits are a safe haven of certainty.”
― Ryan Holiday, Stillness Is the Key

“Life :is: meaningless to the person who decides their choices have no meaning.”
― Ryan Holiday, Stillness Is the Key

“When basically all the wisdom of the ancient world agrees on something, only a fool would decline to listen.”
― Ryan Holiday, Stillness Is the Key

“The closer we get to mastery, the less we care about specific results.”
― Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key

“Each of us must cultivate a moral code, a higher standard that we love almost more than life itself. Each of us must sit down and ask: What’s important to me? What would I rather die for than betray? How am I going to live and why? These are not idle questions or the banal queries of a personality quiz. We must have the answers if we want the stillness (and the strength) that emerges from the citadel of our own virtue. It is for the difficult moments in life—the crossroads that Seneca found himself on when asked to serve Nero—that virtue can be called upon. Heraclitus said that character was fate. He’s right. We develop good character, strong epithets for ourselves, so when it counts, we will not flinch. So that when everyone else is scared and tempted, we will be virtuous. We will be still. HEAL THE INNER CHILD The child is in me still . . . and sometimes not so still. —FRED ROGERS There was always something childlike about Leonardo da Vinci. Indeed, this”
― Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key

“The story of these two combatants may be true. It may be a fable. But it remains one of the best stories we have.”
― Ryan Holiday, Stillness Is the Key

“if a person could develop peace within themselves—if they could achieve apatheia, as they called it—then the whole world could be at war, and they could still think well, work well, and be well. “You may be sure that you are at peace with yourself,” Seneca wrote, “when no noise reaches you, when no word shakes you out of yourself, whether it be flattery or a threat, or merely an empty sound buzzing about you with unmeaning sin.” In this state, nothing could touch them (not even a deranged emperor), no emotion could disturb them, no threat could interrupt them, and every beat of the present moment would be theirs for living.”
― Ryan Holiday, Stillness Is the Key

“Stillness is what aims the archer’s arrow. It inspires new ideas. It sharpens perspective and illuminates connections. It slows the ball down so that we might hit it. It generates a vision, helps us resist the passions of the mob, makes space for gratitude and wonder. Stillness allows us to persevere. To succeed. It is the key that unlocks the insights of genius, and allows us regular folks to understand them.”
― Ryan Holiday, Stillness Is the Key

“People don’t understand that the hardest thing is actually doing something that is close to nothing,” Abramović said about the performance. “It demands all of you . . . there is no object to hide behind. It’s just you.”
― Ryan Holiday, Stillness Is the Key

“love can’t exist off in the future. Love is only real if it’s happening right now. If you think about it, that’s true for basically everything we think, feel, or do.”
― Ryan Holiday, Stillness Is the Key

“We want to learn to see the world like an artist: While other people are oblivious to what surrounds them, the artist really sees. Their mind, fully engaged, notices the way a bird flies or the way a stranger holds their fork or a mother looks at her child. They have no thoughts of the morrow. All they are thinking about is how to capture and communicate this experience.”
― Ryan Holiday, Stillness Is the Key

“Napoleon was content with being behind on his mail, even if it upset some people or if he missed out on some gossip, because it meant that trivial problems had to resolve themselves without him. We need to cultivate a similar attitude—give things a little space, don’t consume news in real time, be a season or two behind on the latest trend or cultural phenomenon, don’t let your inbox lord over your life. The important stuff will still be important by the time you get to it. The unimportant will have made its insignificance obvious (or simply disappeared). Then, with stillness rather than needless urgency or exhaustion, you will be able to sit down and give what deserves consideration your full attention.”
― Ryan Holiday, Stillness Is the Key

“Randall Stutman, who for decades has been the behind-the-scenes advisor for many of the biggest CEOs and leaders on Wall Street, once studied how several hundred senior executives of major corporations recharged in their downtime. The answers were things like sailing, long-distance cycling, listening quietly to classical music, scuba diving, riding motorcycles, and fly-fishing. All these activities, he noticed, had one thing in common: an absence of voices.”
― Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key

“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.”
― Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key

“If Zeno and Buddha needed teachers to advance, then we will definitely need help. And the ability to admit that is evidence of not a small bit of wisdom!”
― Ryan Holiday, Stillness Is the Key

“History teaches us that peace is what provides the opportunity to build. It is the postwar boom that turns nations into superpowers, and ordinary people into powerhouses. And so we must go onward to fight the next battle, to pacify the domain of the spirit and purify our hearts, our emotions, our drives, our passions.”
― Ryan Holiday, Stillness Is the Key

“When you live a life where you’re lying all the time, life is no fun,” Tiger would say later. When your life is out of balance, it’s not fun. When your life is solely and exclusively about yourself, it’s worse than not fun—it’s empty and awful.”
― Ryan Holiday, Stillness Is the Key

“Different situations naturally call for different virtues and different epithets for the self. When we’re going into a tough assignment, we can say to ourselves over and over again, “Strength and courage.” Before a tough conversation with a significant other: “Patience and kindness.” In times of corruption and evil: “Goodness and honesty.”
― Ryan Holiday, Stillness Is the Key

“Give more. Give what you didn’t get. Love more. Drop the old story. Try it, if you can.”
― Ryan Holiday, Stillness Is the Key

“The knowledge that I’ve got enough.” Earl Woods called that the e-word, like it was an expletive. In truth, enough is a beautiful thing. Imagine the stillness that sense of enough brought Joseph Heller and everyone else who has it. No ceaseless wanting. No insecurity of comparison. Feeling satisfied with yourself and your work? What gift!”
― Ryan Holiday, Stillness Is the Key

“I think I understand now that the restlessness we feel as we make our plans and chase our ambitions is not the effect of their importance to our happiness and our eagerness to attain them. We are restless because deep in our hearts we know now that our happiness is found elsewhere, and our work, no matter how valuable it is to us or to others, cannot take its place. But we hurry on anyway, and attend to our business because we need to matter, and we don’t always realize we already do.”
― Ryan Holiday, Stillness Is the Key

“More does nothing for the one who feels less than, who cannot see the wealth that was given to them at birth, that they have accumulated in their relationships and experiences. Solving your problem of poverty is an achievable goal and can be fixed by earning and saving money. No one could seriously claim otherwise. The issue is when we think these activities can address spiritual poverty.”
― Ryan Holiday, Stillness Is the Key

“We work so hard “for our families” that we don’t notice the contradiction—that it’s because of work that we never see them.”
― Ryan Holiday, Stillness Is the Key

“Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.”
― Ryan Holiday, Stillness Is the Key

“must choose to drive out anger and replace it with love and gratitude—and purpose. Our stillness depends on our ability to slow down and choose not to be angry, to run on different fuel. Fuel that helps us win and build, and doesn’t hurt other people, our cause, or our chance at peace.”
― Ryan Holiday, Stillness Is the Key