Creating Strength in Reserve
“[Work] below your means. If you can handle three elements, handle only two. If you can handle ten, then handle only five. In that way the ones you do handle, you handle with more ease, more mastery, and you create a feeling of strength in reserve.”
–Pablo Picasso (Spanish Artist, 1881-1973)
Conversation
“The secret of pleasing in conversation is not to explain too much everything; to say them half and leave a little for divination is a mark of the good opinion we have of others, and nothing flatters their self-love more.”
–François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld (French Writer and Moralist, 1613-1680)
If Your Heart Is Large Enough
“If your heart is large enough to envelop your adversaries, you can see right through them and avoid their attacks. And once you envelop them, you will be able to guide them along the path indicated to you by heaven and earth.”
–Morihei Ueshiba (Japanese Martial Artist and Founder of Aikido, 1883-1969)
Faith in Meaning and Necessity
“We had within us something stronger than reality or probability and that was faith in the meaning and necessity of our action.”
–Hermann Hesse (German-born Swiss Novelist, Poet and, in 1946, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1877-1962)
Unfolding Your Soul
“The rose brings forth fragrance, color, and beautiful structure; so the soul, with its unfoldment, shows personality, atmosphere, and refined manner.”
–Hazrat Inayat Khan (Indian Founder of Universal Sufism and the Sufi Order International, 1882-1927)
Breaking to Create
“Truly every new idea is a violation of some older idea; as the awakening of tomorrow is a violation of today’s slumber. As long as man continues to evolve, in other words, to separate himself from chaos, and to express himself in a higher form, he must always shatter something. In shattering, he disobeys: in breaking, he creates.”
—Jeanne de Vietinghoff (Belgian Writer and Philosopher, 1875-1926)
Learning and Ignorance
“Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before… He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.”
–Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (American Novelist and Satirist, 1922-2007)
Practice
I’m sure that you’ve heard the answer to the question,”How do you get to Carnegie Hall?”
“Practice, practice, practice”
However brilliant and gifted any of us might be, there is always a need to keep our gifts in fine form.
There are few things sadder than wasting our potential.
“Johann Sebastian Bach’s reply to someone praising his extraordinary keyboard prowess;
“There is nothing remarkable about it. All you have to do is hit the right key at the right time and the instrument plays itself. Remember, just practice diligently, and it will go very well. You have five fingers on each hand, just as healthy as mine”.
Without goals, we never make the journey.I’ve generally found more pleasure in the journey than in the arrival.”
–Dan Millman (American Writer, Philosopher and Former World Class Trampolinist, 1947-)
Old But Sound Advice on Health
“A rich man cannot enjoy a sound mind nor a sound body without exercise and abstinence; and yet these are truly the worst ingredients of poverty.”
–Henry Home, Lord Kames (Scottish Judge and Philosopher, 1696-1782)
What Do Value Most Deeply?
“Where do we put our time, our strength, our creativity, our love? We must look at our life without sentimentality, exaggeration, or idealism. Does what we are choosing reflect what we most deeply value?”
–Jack Kornfield (American Meditation Teacher in the Theravadan Buddhist Tradition, 1945-)
