Kind people will tell you things a nice person will not. A kind person will tell you that you have spinach on your teeth. A nice person won’t because it’s uncomfortable.

A kind person will tell us what holds us back, even when it’s uncomfortable. A nice person avoids giving us critical feedback because they’re worried about hurting our feelings.

— Shane Perrish


Ever since happiness heard your name, it has been running through the streets trying to find you.

— Hafez


Your job, throughout your entire life, is to disappoint as many people as it takes to avoid disappointing yourself.

— Glennon Doyle


Perfection is impossible. In the 1526 singles matches I played in my career, I won almost 80% of those matches. Now, I have a question for you.

What percentage of points do you think I won in those matches? Only 54%.

In other words, even top-ranked tennis players win barely more than half of the points they play. When you lose every second point on average, you learn not to dwell on every shot.

You teach yourself to think, okay, I double-faulted … it’s only a point. Okay, I came to the net, then I got passed again; it’s only a point. Even a great shot, an overhead backhand smash that ends up on ESPN’s top 10 playlist. That, too, is just a point.

And here’s why I’m telling you this. When you’re playing a point, it has to be the most important thing in the world, and it is. But when it’s behind you, It’s behind you. This mindset is really crucial because it frees you to fully commit to the next point and the next point after that, with intensity, clarity, and focus.

You want to become a master at overcoming hard moments. That is, to me, the sign of a champion. The best in the world are not the best because they win every point. It’s because they lose again and again and have learned how to deal with it. You accept it. Cry it out if you need to and force a smile.

— Roger Federer


You’re only as good as you’re willing to be bad…The fact that you’re not going to be good at something or that you’re going to fail at something—that’s OK. Because you’re never going to get good unless you’re willing to be bad.

— Randall Stutman


“There are two cardinal sins from which all others spring: Impatience and Laziness.”

— Franz Kafka


If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.

— Charles Bukowski, Factotum


Not judging is another way of letting go of fear and experiencing love. When we learn not to judge others – and totally accept them, and not want to change them – we can simultaneously learn to accept ourselves.

— Gerald G. Jampolsky


Our life’s experience will equal what we have paid attention to whether by choice or default.

— William Joyce


[For] unpleasant tasks, you should imagine what you would have someone else do if you were delegating it. Then do that.

— Rob Fitzpatrick


The ass that you mount and that you use to travel to a house is not the means by which you enter the house. You use the concept to get there; then you dismount, you go beyond it.

— Anthony de Mello


If you want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.

— Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa


It’s easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting.

— Richard Bandler


It’s not that hard work necessarily makes you luckier. It’s that putting in a lot of work positions you so that you will see more opportunities and be prepared to pounce on those opportunities because you’re prepared …This spoke to me so strongly as a metaphor for life.

— Jason Karp


This awful catastrophe is not the end but the beginning. History does not end so. It is the way its chapters open.

— St. Augustine


Plunge into the heat of battle and keep you heart at the lotus feet of the lord.

— Lord Krishna, Bhagavad Gita


There are only two things in this world: love & hate. [Whenever you’re about to do something, ask yourself: which one of these two things are you coming from.]

— Anthony de Mello


90% of your thoughts are repeats.

— Jack Kornfield


A good [relationship] is one in which each [person] secretly thinks he or she got the better deal, and this is true also of our friendships.

— Anne Lamont


If you wish to build a ship, do not divide the men into teams and send them to the forest to cut wood. Instead, teach them to long for the vast and endless sea.

– Antoine de Saint-Exupery


The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation.

— Neil DeGrass Taison


It is inevitable if you enter into relations with people on a regular basis…that you will grow to be like them. Place an extinguished piece of coal next to a live one, and either it will cause the other one to die out, or the live one will make the other reignite. … If you consort with someone covered in dirt you can hardly avoid getting a little grimy yourself.

— Epictetus


Winning does not tempt that man, this is how he grows, by being defeated decisevely by greater and greater beings.

— Rilke


I’d rather learn than be right.

— Diana Chapman


The most important step in becoming successful in anything is to first become interested in it.

— Sir William Osler


Expectation is the grandfather of disappointment. The world can never own a man who wants nothing.

– Aphorisms for Thirsty Fish


I’m no genius. I’m smart in spots—but I stay around those spots.

– Tom Watson Sr


Teach thy tongue to say I do not know, and thou shalt progress.

– Rabbi Moses ben Maimon


Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.

– Chinese proverb


You come into this life crying while everyone around you is laughing. Your objective is to leave this life laughing, while everyone around you is crying.

– Rumi


Everyone is always trying their very very best, and it’s never very very good.

– David Whyte


When you have a clock you always know what time it is. When you have two you are never quite certain.

– Mark Twain


Meditation shows you that happiness and freedom aren’t earned by solving your apparent problems, which are endless. Rather, happiness and freedom can only ever be the place from which you solve—and even enjoy—your problems.

Put another way, happiness and freedom are not the end goal of anything. They are the starting place for everything.

– Sam Harris


How we spend our time is how we spend our days. How we spend our days is how our life goes. How our life goes determines whether we thought it was worth living.

-— Keith Yamashita


If I read as many books as most men do, I would be as dull witted as they are.

– Hobbes


There was once a man who inherited a lot of money and land.

But he squandered it all too quickly. Those who inherit wealth don’t know what it took to get it.

In the same way, we don’t know the value of our souls, which were given to us for nothing.

– Rumi


That which most determines the result of an action is the motivation behind it.

– Buddha


If I had known the real way it was, I would have stopped all the looking around.

But that knowing depends on the time spent looking!

– Rumi


Stand cool and composed before a million universes.

– Walt Whitman