Blog — Quotes

Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.

We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.

The golden rule—treat others as you would treat yourself.
The internal golden rule—treat yourself as others should have treated you.

Ignoring what goes on in other people’s souls—no one ever came to grief that way. But if you won’t keep track of your own soul’s doing, how can you not be unhappy?

When the ending is unknown, and the distance is unknown, that’s when you know who the fuck you are.

The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained.

The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Think only on those things that are in line with your principles and can bear the light of day. The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you do is who you become. Your integrity is your destiny—it is the light that guides your way.

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

The human soul degrades itself above all, when it does its best to become an abscess, a kind of detached growth on the world. To be disgruntled at anything that happens is a kind of secession from Nature, which comprises the nature of all things.

Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed.
Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been.

It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character. Otherwise it cannot harm you—inside or out.

The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.

Well being is good luck, or good character.

They say every snowflake is different—but the blizzard, it covers us all the same.

The truest ruins are not written down.

Ambition means tying your well-being to what other people say or do.
Self-indulgence means tying it to things that happen to you.
Sanity means tying it to your own actions.

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.