1
The next year, the next day, the next hour are lying ready for you, as perfect, as unspoilt, as if you had never wasted or misapplied a single moment in all your career.
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2
My household-gods plant a terrible fixed foot, and are not rooted up without blood.
3
the journey of a thousand li commenced with a single step
Confuciusmisattributed·The Tao Teh King, or the Tao and its Characteristics (trans. James Legge)·1891
Wrongly attributed
Not Confucius. The line is from the Tao Teh King, a different book by a different school, traditionally ascribed to Laozi -- a figure whose very existence historians doubt. Two things drift in the popular version: li becomes miles, and commenced becomes begins with. Legge's 1891 translation, the standard English text for a century, says neither.
4
To get something you never had, you have to do something you never did.
5
Your life will never be a straight path.
6
Do you think I was born to live the life of an oyster, such as I do live here?
7
The movement of the floes was beyond all human control, and there was nothing to be gained by allowing one's mind to struggle with the problems of the future, though it was hard to avoid anxiety at times.
8
A man must shape himself to a new mark directly the old one goes to ground.
9
A man cannot deserve adventures; he cannot earn dragons and hippogriffs.
10
Adventures are to those to whom they are most unexpected
11
If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.
12
There are times when the future seems thick as a fog; you sit and wait, hoping the mists will lift and reveal the right path.
13
Each halt in his progress has been but a pause before a mighty leap forward.
14
Man is only what he becomes--profound truth; but he becomes only what he is, truth still more profound.
15
To reform one's maxims is nothing: it is but to change the title of the book. To learn new habits is everything, for it is to reach the substance of life.
16
At first I hoped that the cloud would pass away of itself; but it did not.
17
But the time came when I awakened from this as from a dream.
18
At this my heart sank within me: the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down.
19
Acquire a method of perceiving how all things change into one another.
20
I have never had any trouble turning the page in the book of my life.
21
You are going to make mistakes — own them, make amends, and move on. Guilt and regret kills many a man before their time. Turn the page, get off the ride.
22
All our limitations are in our own minds, the supply is there waiting in vast abundance.
23
Do not brood over the past, or dream of the future, but seize the instant and get your lesson from the hour.
24
The present time is the raw material out of which we make whatever we will.
25
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself