Introduction

• I’ve loved quotes for a long time and have been collecting quotes that have made an impression on me for at least the last 5 years. I agree with Adam Grant when he said of quotes and aphorisms, “they’re memorable and They give meaning and direction. They spur new thoughts or new actions—or remind us to revisit old ones.”
• The quotes we love and remember are those that we feel speak directly to us, they transcend the individual context in which we see them and provide us a nugget of insight of knowledge we can take forward and apply more broadly to other aspects of our lives.
• The construction of the quote also plays a big part on which quotes last for generations while others, which have the same core message or meaning, are quickly forgotten. For example, a study in 2000 found that people preferred rhyming quotes.
• While I’ve been collecting quotes for a number of years, it wasn’t until recently that I decided to organise them into different themes. The primary driver for doing this was I realised that because my list was so long there were quotes which I’d forgotten about, but when I rediscovered them still strongly resonated with me. Therefore, I thought that grouping the quotes into themes would (a) give me the opportunity to revisit all the quotes I’d captured and (b) help me find the ‘right’ quote I need depending on the motivation, meaning and direction I need in a particular moment.
• After a lot of thinking and testing different ways to categorise the quotes, I came up with the following 7 themes. You won’t be surprised that these themes align closely – although not directly – with the topics of this blog.
  1. To Live A Good Life
  2. Success
  3. Health & Nutrition
  4. Investing & Money
  5. Appreciation & Acceptance
  6. Action & Ownership
  7. Miscellaneous

• I will post a blog on each of the above themes in a 7 part series on ‘My Favourite Quotes’. This is the first blog post in this series focused on ‘Living a Good Life’. For the rest of the posts in the series, please click on the relevant hyperlink above. There is no requirement to read the series in order, just dive into the area which appeals most to you right now.
• You’ll notice when reading the series that each theme has a number of topics, this helps me, and will hopefully help you, find the quotes which best apply to what you’re searching for.
• There is no particular order to the quotes within the themes or topics, I considered ranking the quotes within topics but realised that would be an impossible task. For me, it’s about having a catalogue of quotes available to support me, different quotes will be more applicable in some moments than others.
• I am very aware of how often quotes are misattributed. It’s almost as if when people are in doubt of the attribution of a quote, they assign it to Einstein, Twain, Shakespeare or Edison. I have done my best to attribute quotes correctly, however I cannot be 100% certain, so I apologise in advance of any misattributions.
• I hope you find this series useful, and as a collector of quotations, please include any quotes you love in the comments!

Top Quotes for me right now To Live A Good Life

Internal Scorecard / Creed

• ‘I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me’ – Zadie Smith in ‘NW’
• ‘The little mental trick is to remember that success, money, fame, and beauty, all the things we pursue, are merely the numerator! If the denominator — shame, regret, unhappiness, loneliness — is too large, our “Life Satisfaction Score” ends up being tiny, worthless. Even if we have all that good stuff!’ – Shane Parish
• ‘Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.’ – Dr Seuss
• ‘If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment’ – Marcus Aurelius
• ‘The true measurement of a person’s worth isn’t what they say they believe in, but what they do in defence of those beliefs’- Edward Snowden
• ‘Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues but the parent of all the others.’ — Cicero
• ‘On one level, Wisdom is nothing more profound than an ability to follow one’s own advice’ – Sam Harris

Always be learning

• ‘Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learn of him.’ – Ralph Waldo Emerson
• ‘Learn More, Know Less’ – Neill Strauss
• ‘Go on; and try to be wiser; and keep future promises better; and avoid future mistakes.’ – Francis Spufford in ‘Golden Hill’
• ‘Only one who has learned much can fully appreciate his ignorance.’ – Louis L’Armour

Love & friendship

• ‘If you get to my age in life and nobody thinks well of you, I don’t care how big your bank account is, your life is a disaster. That’s the ultimate test of how you have lived your life. The trouble with love is that you can’t buy it. You can buy sex. You can buy testimonial dinners. You can buy pamphlets that say how wonderful you are. But the only way to get love is to be lovable.’ – Warren Buffett
• ‘A good marriage is one in which each spouse secretly thinks he or she got the better deal, and this is true also of our friendships.’ – Anne Lamott
• ‘The most desired gift of love is not diamonds or roses or chocolate. It is focused attention.’ – Richard Warren
• ‘If you would be loved, love and be lovable.’ – Benjamin Franklin
• ‘You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.’ – Dale Carnegie

Positive Habits

•  ‘Men are what they are because of what they do. Not what they say.’ – Ove from An Man Called Ove, a book by Fredrik Backman
• ‘We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.’ – Will Durant
• ‘Your head’s for having ideas, not for holding them’ – David Allen
• ‘Be steady and well-ordered in your life so that you can be fierce and original in your work.’ – Gustave Flaubert
• ‘Happiness is a choice and it is skill which can be learned’ – Naval Ravikant

Life isn’t about money

• ‘I wish everyone could become rich & famous so they could realise it’s not the answer’ – Jim Carey
• ‘We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to live. That is what life means and what life is for.’ – George Mallory
• ‘At the limit, you can decide whether to be (relatively) poor, but free of your time, or rich but as dependent as a slave.’ – Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Buying material items won’t make you happy

•  ‘We buy things we don’t need, with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t like’ – Edward Norton as Tyler Durden in Fight Club
• ‘Upgrading your car, house, lifestyle, etc. isn’t ‘’rewarding yourself’’ for hard work, it’s creating more work for your future self’ – Collecting Wisdom (On Twitter)
• ‘To be free, to be happy and fruitful, can only be attained through sacrifice of many common but overestimated things.’ – Robert Henri

Cultivate Stillness

• ‘Beware the barrenness of a busy life’ – Socrates
• ‘Busy is the death of productivity and happiness’ – Naval Ravikant
• ‘The body benefits from movement, and the mind benefits from stillness.’ – Sakyong Mipham
• ‘To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.’ – Lao Tzu

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