Self
"... after spending these years in the study of the book of the world and in trying to gain experience , the day came when I resolved to make my studies within myself, and use all of the powers fo my mind to choose the path that I must follow"
- Rene Descartes
"When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of space of which I am ignorant, and which knows me not, I am frightened, and am astonished being here rather than there, why now rather than then."
- Blaise Pascal
"Act for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes ... If death ends all, we cannot meet death better."
- William James
"Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beutiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be beautiful: he cuts away here, smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his work. So do you also: cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labor to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiseling your statue, until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendor of virtue, until you shall see the perfect goodness surely established in this stainless shrine.
- Plotinus
"It's all about identity. We look at a flock of birds and we think one bird is the same as any other bird - a bird unit. But a bird looks down at thousands of people, at a Giants game up at Candlestick Park, say, and all they see is 'people units.' We're all as identical to them as they are to us. So what makes you different from me? Him from you? Them from her? What makes any one person any different from any other? Where does your individuality end and your species-hood begin?"
- Microserfs pg. 236
"What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters, compared to what lies within us"
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I never let my schooling interfere with my education"
- Mark Twain
"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
- Albert Einstein
"The prospect of a long day at the beach makes me panic. There is no harder work I can think of than taking myself off to somewhere pleasant, where I am forced to stay for hours and 'have fun'".
- Phillip Lopate
"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself."
- Tolstoy
"Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think."
- Niels Bohr
"My great mistake, the fault for which I can't forgive myself, is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality."
- Oscar Wilde
"I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence."
- Frederick Douglass
