In my copy of George Herbert's poems, there is a section of proverbs and sayings that he collected. This is my nod to his practice and a place for me to keep quotes I love. They follow no order other than when I wrote them down and I'll keep adding to them through the years.
"Do the words give up mean anything to you."
"Not a thing."
-Cool Runnings
"Work, my friend, to the glory of God! While remembering that eternity lies ahead, do not neglect time, for only in time can something be achieved."
-Eugene Vodolazkin from his novel, Brisbane
"I trained for four years to run 9 seconds and people give up when they don't see results in 2 months."
-Usain Bolt
Don't let your focus get lost in your lust."
-article online on Medium by Ced
"Our essential concern should be to develop a capacity to receive the Spirit, that is, to live a divinized life."
-Erik Varden in his incredible book, The Shattering of Loneliness
"...our bodies are privileged instruments in our search to know and love an incarnate God."
-Erik Varden, again, The Shattering of Loneliness
"Our entire social order can be measured by envy's accumulated gaze."
-Mark Ellison, Building- A Carpenter's Notes on Life and the Art of Good Work
"No mastery is easily learned."
-Mark Ellison, Building- A Carpenter's Notes on Life and the Art of Good Work
"taking on a challenging project isn't worth hesitation over. I want to learn more, to become more proficient, to make things that I think are astonishing. If that means enduring weeks of self-doubt and intestinal discomfort, then that is the process I must pay."
Mark Ellison, Building, A Carpenter's Notes on Life and the Art of Good Work
"Each of us must satisfy ourselves that our life has been worth the time we've spent living it."
-Mark Ellison, A Carpenter's Notes on Life and the Art of Good Work
"Comfort and safety are strong opiate against the disconsonance and fear they stave off."
-Mark Ellison, A Carpenter's Notes on Life and the Art of Good Work
"Joy is sorrow overcome."
-from the priest, played by Liam Neeson, in Wildcat as he talks to Flannery O'Connor
"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."
-Anais Nin
"Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always in ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans that the moment one definitely commits oneself then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would otherwise never have occurred."
-Goethe
"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult."
-Seneca
"You are lost the instant you know what the result will be."
-Juan Gris
"Once you accept the fact that you're not perfect, then you develop some confidence."
-Rosalyn Carter
"At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities."
-Jean Houston
"A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
-John Henry Newman
"Most modern freedom is at root fear. It is not so much that we are too bold to endure rules; it is rather that we are too timid to endure responsibilities."
-G.K. Chesterton
"To spare oneself from grief at all cost can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability to experience happiness."
-Erich Fromm
"There can be no real freedom without the freedom to fail."
-Erich Fromm
"Sentiment without action is the ruin of one's soul."
-Edward Abbey
"To be human is to be responsible."
-Antoine de Saint Exupery
"...we put the thought of all that we love into all that we make."
-JRR Tolkien when the elves give the Fellowship their cloaks woven by Galdhrim
"One of the causes of the troubles that beset us is the way our lives are guided by the example of others, instead of being set to rights by reason were seduced by convention."
-Seneca
"1. Work on one thing at a time until finished. 2.Start no more new books, add no more new material to 'Black Spring.' 3. Don't be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is at hand. 4. Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time! 5. When you can't create you can work. 6. Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers. 7. Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it. 8. Don't be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only. 9. Discard the Program when you feel like it- but go back to it next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude. 10. Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing. 11.Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.
-Henry Miller's 11 commandments for writing and his daily creative routine
"He is a candle that sets everything afire wherever he goes."
-What a critic said of Bartolome de las Casas, the slave owning, plantation managing, priest that repented of his treatment of slaves and became a tireless advocate for the indigenous people of Central and South America that were brutally crushed by the Spanish conquistadors.
"Pleasure, profit, and honor are the natural man's Trinity."
-Richard Baxter, The Saint's Everlasting Rest
"Further, the neoliberal celebration of the individual maximizer over society, of individual property over common property, of the treatment of land (nature) and labor (human work life) as market commodities, and monetary commensuration in, say, cost-benefit analysis (e.g., shadow pricing for the value of a sunset or an endangered view) all encourage habits of social calculation that smack of social Darwinism."
-James C. Scott, Two Cheers for Anarchism
"If we wish to understand other people and propose to claim to have in fact done so, it is both imprudent and rude not to attend to what they say...What we cannot properly do is to claim to know that we understand him [an agent] or his action better than he does himself without access to the best descriptions which he is able to offer."
-John Dunn
"The south face is the most often climbed, the snow is softer, and the sunlight makes warmer. I prefer the more difficult side. The hard, icy face. The North Face is a more difficult challenge. I take that route in life."
-Doug Tompkins- what he would tell people when they asked him why he called his first company, The North Face.
"A basket weaver that makes one basket, makes a hundred, give him branches, and time."
-Portuguese proverb read at the Folk Art Museum in Lisbon at the basket weaving exhibit, which was stunning.
"Perhaps if you approved the plans of the glad creator, you would allow him to make of you something divine."
-George MacDonald, from his sermon, A Child in the Midst