Say Again It Dont Matter None of This Matters

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21 Quotes That (If Applied) Alter You lot Into a Better Person

As long every bit human has been alive, he has been collecting little sayings nigh how to live. We observe them carved in the rock of the Temple of Apollo and etched as graffiti on the walls of Pompeii. They appear in the plays of Shakespeare, the commonplace book of H. P. Lovecraft, the collected proverbs of Erasmus, and the ceiling beams of Montaigne'southward study. Today, they're recorded on iPhones and in Evernote.

Just whatever generation is doing it, whether they're written by scribes in Red china or commoners in some European dungeon or simply passed along by a kindly granddad, these niggling epigrams of life communication have taught essential lessons. How to respond to adversity. How to recall near money. How to meditate on our mortality. How to have courage.

And they pack all this in in so few words. "What is an epigram?" Coleridge asked, "A dwarfish whole; Its body brevity, and wit its soul." Epigrams are what Churchill was doing when he said: "To better is to alter, and so to be perfect is to have changed oftentimes." Or Balzac: "All happiness depends on courage and work." Ah yes, epigrams are frequently funny also. That's how nosotros remember them. Napoleon: "Never interrupt an enemy making a mistake." François de La Rochefoucauld: "Nosotros hardly observe whatever persons of skilful sense salvage those who agree with us." Voltaire: "A long dispute means that both parties are wrong."

Below are some wonderful epigrams that span some 21 centuries and 3 continents. Each one is worth remembering, having queued in your brain for ane of life'due south crossroads or to drop at the perfect moment in conversation. Each will modify and evolve with y'all as you evolve (Heraclitus: "No man steps in the same river twice") and yet each will remain strong and unyielding no matter how much you may one day try to wiggle out and abroad from them.

Fundamentally, each ane volition teach you how to exist a better person. If y'all let them.

"Nosotros must all either wear out or rust out, every one of u.s.. My choice is to wear out." — Theodore Roosevelt

At the beginning of his life, few would accept predicted that Theodore Roosevelt even had a selection in the thing. He was sickly and fragile, doted on by worried parents. Then, a conversation with his male parent sent him driven, almost maniacally in the other direction. "I volition brand my trunk," he said, when told that he would not get far in this world with a vivid listen in a frail body. What followed was a montage of boxing, hiking, horseback riding, hunting, angling, swimming, boldly charging enemy burn, and so a grueling work pace every bit one of the most prolific and admired presidents in American history. Again, this epigram was prophetic for Roosevelt, because at just 54 years old, his body began to wear out. An assassination endeavour left a bullet lodged in his body and it hastened his rheumatoid arthritis. On his famous "River of Uncertainty" trek he developed a tropical fever and the toxins from an infection in his leg left him nearly expressionless. Back in America he contracted a severe throat infection and was later on diagnosed with inflammatory rheumatism, which temporarily bars him to a wheelchair (saying famously, "All right! I can work that way also!") and then he died at age 60. Just in that location is not a person on the planet who would say that he had not made a fair trade, that he had not worn his life well and not lived a full ane in those 60 years.

"It'south not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters." — Epictetus

At that place is the story of the alcoholic male parent with ii sons. One follows in his male parent's footsteps and ends up struggling through life as a drunk, and the other becomes a successful, sober businessman. Each are asked: "Why are you lot the fashion yous are?" The respond for both is the same: "Well, it'southward considering my male parent was an alcoholic." The same event, the same childhood, ii different outcomes. This is true for most all situations — what happens to us is an objective reality, how nosotros respond is a subjective pick. The Stoics — of which Epictetus was one — would say that we don't control what happens to us, all nosotros control are our thoughts and reactions to what happens to us. Think that: Yous're divers in this life not by your expert luck or your bad luck, but your reaction to those strokes of fortune. Don't allow anyone tell you different.

"The all-time revenge is non to be like that." — Marcus Aurelius

At that place is a proverb well-nigh revenge: Before setting out for a journey of revenge, dig two graves. Because revenge is so costly, considering the pursuit of it oftentimes wears on the one who covets it. Marcus's advice is easier and truer: How much ameliorate it feels to permit it go, to go out the wrongdoer to their wrongdoing. And from what nosotros know, Marcus Aurelius lived this advice. When Avidius Cassius, ane of his most trusted generals rebelled and declared himself emperor, Marcus did non seek vengeance. Instead, he saw this as an opportunity to teach the Roman people and the Roman Senate nigh how to bargain with ceremonious strife in a compassionate, forgiving mode. Indeed, when assassins struck Cassius down, Marcus supposedly wept. This is very different than the idea of "Living well existence the best revenge" — information technology's not about showing someone up or rubbing your success in their confront. Information technology'southward that the person who wronged yous is not happy, is not enjoying their life. Do not become like them. Reward yourself by being the opposite of them.

"At that place is practiced in everything, if only we await for it." — Laura Ingalls Wilder

Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the archetype serial Trivial House, lived this, facing some of the toughest and unwelcoming elements on the planet: harsh and unyielding soil, Indian territory, Kansas prairies, and the boiling backwoods of Florida. Non afraid, not jaded — because she saw it all equally an adventure. Everywhere was a chance to do something new, to persevere with cheery pioneer spirit whatever fate befell her and her married man. That isn't to say she saw the globe through delusional rose-colored glasses. Instead, she just chose to see each situation for what it could be — accompanied by hard piece of work and a fiddling upbeat spirit. Others brand the contrary choice. Think: There is no good or bad without the states, in that location is but perception. There is the event itself and the story we tell ourselves near what information technology means.

"Character is fate." — Heraclitus

In the hiring process, about employers look at where someone went to school, what jobs they've held in the past. This is considering past success can exist an indicator of future successes. But is information technology always? In that location are enough of people who were successful because of luck. Maybe they got into Oxford or Harvard because of their parents. And what nigh a young person who hasn't had time to build a track record? Are they worthless? Of class non. This is why grapheme is a far better measure of a human being or woman. Not just for jobs, merely for friendships, relationships, for everything. When you seek to accelerate your own position in life, character is the best lever — perhaps not in the short term, but certainly over the long term. And the same goes for the people y'all invite into your life.

"If you run into fraud and do not say fraud, you lot are a fraud." — Nicholas Nassim Taleb

A man shows up for piece of work at a visitor where he knows that management is doing something incorrect, something unethical. How does he respond? Tin can he cash his checks in practiced conscience because he isn't the i running up the stock cost, falsifying reports or lying to his co-workers? No. One cannot, as Budd Schulberg says in one of his novels, deal in filth without condign the thing he touches. Nosotros should look upwards to a fellow at Theranos as an example here. Later on discovering numerous problems at the wellness care startup, he was dismissed by his seniors and eventually contacted the authorities. Subsequently, not but was this swain repeatedly threatened, bullied, and attacked past Theranos, merely his family unit had to consider selling their house to pay for the legal bills. His relationship with his grandfather — who sits on the Theranos lath — is strained and perhaps irreparable. Equally Marcus Aurelius reminded himself, and us: "Just that you do the correct thing. The residual doesn't matter." It'southward an important reminder. Doing the right thing isn't costless. Doing the right thing might fifty-fifty cost you everything.

"Every man I meet is my master in some signal, and in that I learn of him." — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Everyone is better than y'all at something. This is a fact of life. Someone is amend than yous at making eye contact. Someone is better than you lot at quantum physics. Someone is better informed than y'all on geopolitics. Someone is better than you are at speaking kindly to someone they dislike. There are meliorate gift-givers, name-rememberers, weight-lifters, temper-controllers, confidence-carriers, and friendship-makers. At that place is no one person who is the best at all these things, who doesn't have room to better in 1 or more of them. So if you can discover the humility to take this about yourself, what you will realize is that the world is i giant classroom. Go about your day with an openness and a joy about this fact. Look at every interaction as an opportunity to learn from and of the people you run into. Y'all will be amazed at how quickly you abound, how much better you lot become.

"This is non your responsibility but it is your problem." — Cheryl Strayed

Information technology is not your responsibility to fill up a stranger's gas tank, but when their car dies in front of you, blocking the road, information technology's nonetheless your problem isn't it? Information technology is not your responsibility to negotiate peace treaties on behalf of your country, only when state of war breaks out and you're drafted to fight in it? Guess whose trouble it is? Yours. Life is similar this. It has a mode of dropping things into our lap — the consequences of an employee's negligence, a spouse's momentary lapse of judgement, a freak weather condition effect — that were in no way our fault just past nature of being in our lap, our f*cking trouble. And then what are you going to practice? Mutter? Are yous going to litigate this in a blogpost or an argument with God? Or are you lot but going to become to work solving it the best you can? Life is defined by how you lot answer that question. Cheryl Strayed is right. This thing might not be your responsibility but it is your problem. And then have it, deal with it, kick its ass.

"Waste product no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be 1." — Marcus Aurelius

In Rome just as America, in the forum just as on Facebook, at that place was the temptation to replace action with statement. To philosophize instead of living philosophically. Today, in a club obsessed with content, outrage, and drama, it'due south fifty-fifty easier to get lost in the echo sleeping room of the fence of what's "better." We can accept endless discussions about what's right and wrong. What should we do in this hypothetical situation or that ane? How tin we encourage other people to be better? (We can fifty-fifty debate the meaning of the above line: "What's a human? What's the definition of good? Why doesn't it mention women?") Of course, this is all a lark. If you desire to try to brand the world a slightly better identify, there's a lot you can exercise. Only merely ane affair guarantees an affect. Pace away from the argument. Dig yourself out of the rubble. Finish wasting fourth dimension with how things should exist, would be, could be. Exist that affair. (Here's a cool poster of this quote).

"Y'all are but entitled to the activeness, never to its fruits." — Bhagavad Gita

In life, it's a fact that: You lot will be unappreciated. Yous will exist sabotaged. You will experience surprising failures. Your expectations will not be met. Y'all will lose. Yous will fail. How do you behave on so? How practise you accept pride in yourself and your work? John Wooden's communication to his players says it: Modify the definition of success. "Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self satisfaction in knowing yous made the endeavor to practice your best to become the best that yous are capable of becoming." "Ambition," Marcus Aurelius reminded himself, "means tying your well-being to what other people say or do . . . Sanity means tying it to your own actions." Do your work. Do information technology well. So "permit go and let God." That's all there needs to exist. Recognition and rewards — those are just actress.

"Cocky-sufficiency is the greatest of all wealth." — Epicurus

A lot has been said of then-called "F*ck You Money." The thought beingness that if one can earn enough, get rich and powerful plenty, that all of a sudden no ane tin touch them and they can do whatever they want. What a mirage this is! How oftentimes the target seems to mysteriously motility right as we arroyo it. Information technology calls to mind the ascertainment of David "DHH" Heinemeier Hansson who said that "beyond a specific amount, f*ck-you money can exist a land of mind. Ane that you can acquire well in accelerate of the corresponding banking concern business relationship. One that'due south founded mostly on a personal conviction that even if well-nigh of the material trappings went away, y'all'd still be happier for standing your ground." The truth is existence your own human being, beingness self-contained, having fewer needs, and better, resilient skills that allow y'all to thrive in any and all situations. That is real wealth and freedom. That'southward what Emerson was talking almost in his famous essay on self-reliance and it's what Epicurus meant too.

"Tell me to what you lot pay attention and I will tell you who you are." — Jose Ortega y Gasset

Information technology was one of the great Stoics who said that if you live with a lame human being, shortly enough you lot will walk with a limp. My male parent told me something similar as a kid: "Yous become like your friends." It is true not just with social influences but advisory ones as well: If yous are addicted to the chatter of the news, you will soon find yourself worried, resentful, and perpetually outraged. If you swallow nothing but escapist entertainment, you volition find the real world around you harder and harder to bargain with. If all yous do is watch the markets and obsess over every fluctuation, your worldview will become defined by money and gains and losses. But if you drink from deep, philosophical wisdom? If y'all take regularly in your mind function models of restraint, sobriety, backbone, and honor? Well, you will start to go these things too. Tell me who you spend time with, Goethe said, and I will tell yous who yous are. Tell me what you pay attention to, Gasset was saying, and I can tell you the same thing. Remember that the next time you experience your finger itching to pull up your Facebook feed.

"Better to trip with the feet than with the tongue." — Zeno

Y'all can always become up after you fall, but remember, what has been said can never exist unsaid. Especially brutal and hurtful things.

"Space I can recover. Time, never." — Napoleon Bonaparte

Lands tin exist reconquered, indeed in the course of a battle, a hill or a certain plain might trade hands several times. But missed opportunities? These can never exist regained. Moments in time, in civilisation? They tin never exist re-made. 1 can never go dorsum in fourth dimension to fix for what they should have prepared for, no one can ever get dorsum critical seconds that were wasted out of fear or ego. Napoleon was vivid at trading space for time: Sure, you can make these moves, provided yous are giving me the time I need to drill my troops, or move them to where I want them to be. Yet in life, nigh of u.s. are terrible at this. We trade an hr of our life here or afternoon there like information technology tin can be bought back with the few dollars nosotros were paid for information technology. And information technology is just much much later, as they are on their deathbeds or when they are looking back on what might have been, that many people realize the awful truth of this quote. Don't do that. Comprehend it now.

"You never know who's pond naked until the tide goes out." — Warren Buffett

The problem with comparing yourself to other people is you really never know anyone else's situation. The co-worker with a nice car? It could be a dangerous and unsafe salvage with 100,000 miles. The friend who e'er seems to be traveling to far off places? They could be up to their eyeballs in credit carte debt and nearly to get fired by their boss. Your neighbors' marriage which makes you lot so insecure about your own? It could be a nightmare, a complete prevarication. People exercise a very good job pretending at things, and their well-maintained fronts are often covers for incredible risk and irresponsibility. You never know, Warren Buffett was saying, until things get bad. If you lot're living the life you know to exist correct, if you are making good, solid decisions, don't be swayed by what others are doing — whether that is taking the form of irrational exuberance or panicked pessimism. Run across the high flying lives of others as a cautionary tale — like Icarus with his wings — and not as an inspiration or a source of insecurity. Continue doing what you're doing and don't exist caught swimming naked! Considering the tide will leave. Prepare for it! (Premeditatio Malorum)

"Search others for their virtues, thyself for thy vices." — Benjamin Franklin

Marcus Aurelius would say something similar: "Be tolerant with others and strict with yourself." Why? For starters because the only person you lot command is yourself. It's a complete waste matter of time to go effectually projecting strict standards on other people — ones they never agreed to follow in the first place — and and then beingness aghast or feel wronged when they fall short. The other reason is y'all accept no idea what other people are going or have been through. That person who seemed to rudely decline the invitation you and then kindly offered? What if they were working hard to recommit themselves to their family unit and as much as they'd similar to have coffee with you, are doing their best to spend more time with their loved ones? The point is: You lot take no idea. So requite people the benefit of the doubt. Look for proficient in them, assume good in them, and allow that good inspire your ain actions.

"The world was not big enough for Alexander the Neat, but a coffin was." — Juvenal

Ah, the way that a good one liner can humble fifty-fifty the globe'southward greatest conqueror. Remember: we are all equals in death. It makes quick piece of work of all of us, big and small-scale. I carry a money in my pocket to remember this: Memento Mori. What Juvenal reminds u.s. is the same matter that Shakespeare spoke virtually in Hamlet:

"Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay,
Might end a pigsty to keep the wind away.
O' that that earth which kept the world in awe
Should patch a wall t' expel the winder'southward flaw!"

It doesn't matter how famous you are, how powerful you are, how much yous think you lot have left to do on this planet, the same matter happens to all of u.s., and information technology tin happen when we least look information technology. And then we volition be wormfood and that's the end of it.

"To improve is to change, so to be perfect is to have inverse oft." — Winston Churchill

While this is probably not a Churchill original (he most probable borrowed from Central Newman: "In a college globe information technology is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often"), Churchill certainly abided this in his life. He'd even quip near his constant change of political affiliation: "I said a lot of stupid things when I worked with the Conservative Party, and I left it because I did not want to go on saying stupid things." Every bit Cicero would say when attacked that he was changing his opinion: "If something strikes me as probable, I say it; and that is how, unlike everyone else, I remain a gratuitous agent." There is nix more than impressive — intellectually or otherwise — than to change long held beliefs, opinions, and habits. The more you lot've changed, the better y'all probably are.

"Gauge not, lest yous be judged." — Jesus

Not just here would Jesus call u.s.a. on 1 of our worst tendencies but immediately likewise ask: "And why practice you look at the speck in your brother'south eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?" This line is similar to what the Stoic philosopher Seneca, who historical sources suggest was born the same year as Jesus, would say: "You look at the pimples of others when yous yourselves are covered with a mass of sores." Waste no time judging and worrying nigh other people. You lot have plenty of bug to deal with in your own life. Chances are your own flaws are probably worse — and in any example, they are at least in your control. So exercise something about them.

"Time and patience are the strongest warriors." — Leo Tolstoy

Tolstoy puts the above words in the mouth of Field Marshall Mikhail Kutuzov in War and Peace. In real life, Kutuzov gave Napoleon a painful lesson in the truth of the epigram over a long winter in Russia in 1812. Tolstoy would likewise say, "Everything comes in fourth dimension to him who knows how to wait." When it comes to accomplishing anything significant, you are required to exhibit patience and fortitude, then much patience, as much every bit you'd think you'd need boldness and courage. In my book Conspiracy, about Peter Thiel's plot to destroy Gawker, his operative describes a similar idea: With enough time and patience, you can do annihilation.

"No one saves usa but ourselves / No i can and no ane may." — Buddha

Will we wait for someone to save united states of america, or volition nosotros listen to Marcus Aurelius's empowering call to "become active in your own rescue — if you intendance for yourself at all — and do it while yous can."

Because at some point, we must put articles like this 1 aside and take activity. No one can accident our nose for the states. Some other blog post isn't the respond. The right choices and decisions are. Who knows how much time you have left, or what awaits us tomorrow? So get to it.

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This piece originally ran on Art of Manliness.

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Source: https://medium.com/thrive-global/21-quotes-that-if-applied-change-boys-into-men-3e124aff36f8