The Secret to Everything Quotes

“The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes. ​— ​Friedrich Schiller”
― Neel Burton, The Secret to Everything: How to Live More and Suffer Less

“patron goddess of Athens, the city in which the Lysis is set, is none other than Athena, goddess of wisdom, who sprang out from the skull of Zeus clad in full armour.”
― Neel Burton, The Secret to Everything: How to Live More and Suffer Less

“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts. ​— ​Marcus Aurelius”
― Neel Burton, The Secret to Everything: How to Live More and Suffer Less

“the insults that come our way have nothing to do with us and everything to do with the person or people doing the insulting (since, really, there is never any need to insult anyone).”
― Neel Burton, The Secret to Everything: How to Live More and Suffer Less

“truth is constructive and adaptive, while lies are destructive and self-defeating.”
― Neel Burton, The Secret to Everything: How to Live More and Suffer Less

“When one sees eternity in things that pass away and infinity in finite things, then one has pure knowledge.’ There has never been a time when you and I have not existed, nor will there be a time when we will cease to exist ... the wise are not deluded by these changes.”
― Neel Burton, The Secret to Everything: How to Live More and Suffer Less

“By seeing the absurd or ridiculous aspect of an emotion, event, or situation, we are able to look at it in a less threatening light.”
― Neel Burton, The Secret to Everything: How to Live More and Suffer Less

“Cicero called gratitude the greatest of the virtues, and, more than that, the mother of all the other virtues.”
― Neel Burton, The Secret to Everything: How to Live More and Suffer Less

“If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperilled in a hundred battles. ​— ​Sun Tzu”
― Neel Burton, The Secret to Everything: How to Live More and Suffer Less

“Offence exists not in the insult or the insulter but in our reaction to them, and our reactions are completely within our control. It is unreasonable to expect a boor to be anything but a boor; if we take offence at his bad behaviour, we have only ourselves to blame.”
― Neel Burton, The Secret to Everything: How to Live More and Suffer Less

“The fundamental problem with the put-down, however sparkling it may be, is that it equalizes us with our insulter, bringing them up to our level and us down to theirs. This gives them, their behaviour, and their insult far too much legitimacy.”
― Neel Burton, The Secret to Everything: How to Live More and Suffer Less

“if you think that the person who insulted you is unworthy of you and your cares, you have no reason to take offence, just as you have no reason to take offence at a naughty child or a barking dog.”
― Neel Burton, The Secret to Everything: How to Live More and Suffer Less

“Of all good and beautiful things, the best, most beautiful, and most dependable is truth or wisdom,”
― Neel Burton, The Secret to Everything: How to Live More and Suffer Less

“People with healthy self-esteem do not need to prop themselves up with externals such as income, status, or notoriety, or lean on crutches such as alcohol, drugs, or sex.”
― Neel Burton, The Secret to Everything: How to Live More and Suffer Less

“Healthy self-love, on the other hand, is akin to self-esteem, which is our cognitive and, above all, emotional appraisal of our own worth. More than that, it is the matrix through which we think, feel, and act, and reflects on our relation to ourselves, to others, and to the world.”
― Neel Burton, The Secret to Everything: How to Live More and Suffer Less

“Aristotle taught that a person can bear goodwill to another for one of three reasons: that he is useful; that he is pleasant; and above all, that he is good, that is, rational and virtuous.”
― Neel Burton, The Secret to Everything: How to Live More and Suffer Less

“He whom love touches not walks in darkness. ​— ​Plato”
― Neel Burton, The Secret to Everything: How to Live More and Suffer Less

“our main drive or motivation in life is neither pleasure, as Freud had believed, nor power, as Adler had, but meaning.”
― Neel Burton, The Secret to Everything: How to Live More and Suffer Less

“our need to self-actualize obliges us to go beyond our individual, limited selves and fulfil our full potential”
― Neel Burton, The Secret to Everything: How to Live More and Suffer Less

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. ​— ​Søren Kierkegaard”
― Neel Burton, The Secret to Everything: How to Live More and Suffer Less

“Courage, said Aristotle, is the first of the human qualities, because it is the one which guarantees all the others.”
― Neel Burton, The Secret to Everything: How to Live More and Suffer Less

“when we put ourselves into somebody else’s shoes, we begin, if only for a time, to see the bigger picture. In cultivating a broader perspective, it helps, of course, to be knowledgeable, but it also helps to be intelligent, reflective, open-minded, and disinterested”
― Neel Burton, The Secret to Everything: How to Live More and Suffer Less

“Socrates was the wisest of all people not because he knew everything or anything, but because he knew what he did not know—or, more subtly, because he knew the limits of the little that he did know.”
― Neel Burton, The Secret to Everything: How to Live More and Suffer Less

“if wisdom is a certain kind of knowledge, then it is not scientific or technical knowledge, or else contemporary people would be wiser than even the wisest of ancient philosophers.”
― Neel Burton, The Secret to Everything: How to Live More and Suffer Less

“The patron goddess of Athens, the city in which the Lysis is set, is none other than Athena, goddess of wisdom, who sprang out from the skull of Zeus clad in full armour. Athena’s symbol, and the symbol of wisdom, is the owl, a bird of prey which can cleave through darkness. Indeed, the word ‘wisdom’ derives from the Proto-Indo-European root weid-, ‘to see’,”
― Neel Burton, The Secret to Everything: How to Live More and Suffer Less

“If you are wise, all men will be your friends and kindred, for you will be useful and good; but if you are not wise, neither father, nor mother, nor kindred, nor anyone else, will be your friends.”
― Neel Burton, The Secret to Everything: How to Live More and Suffer Less

“For wisdom is a defence, and money is a defence: but the excellency of knowledge is, that wisdom giveth life to them that have it.”
― Neel Burton, The Secret to Everything: How to Live More and Suffer Less

“Remember to be grateful even for the small things, indeed, especially for the small things,”
― Neel Burton, The Secret to Everything: How to Live More and Suffer Less

“gratitude is the feeling of appreciation for all that we already have. More than that, it is the recognition that the good in our life can come from something that is beyond us and beyond our control—be it other people, nature, or a higher power”
― Neel Burton, The Secret to Everything: How to Live More and Suffer Less

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. ​— ​GK Chesterton”
― Neel Burton, The Secret to Everything: How to Live More and Suffer Less