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 5th blog post in this series focused on ‘Appreciation & Acceptance’. 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

Be You / Accept Yourself

• ‘Don’t be a lesser someone else, be a better you’ – Unknown
• ‘It’s good to know who hates you, and it’s good to be hated by the right people.’ – Johnny Cash
• ‘No amount of self-improvement can make up for a lack of self-acceptance’ – Robert Holden
• ‘Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; live with the mighty. But learn to be happy alone. Rely upon your own energies, and so not wait for, or depend on other people.’ – Professor Thomas Davidson
• ‘If information was the answer, we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs’ – Derek Sivers
• ‘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
• ‘This is the very perfection of a man, to find out his own imperfection’ – Saint Augustine

You Control your mindset

• ‘A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue, but the parent of all other virtues’ – Marcus Tullius Cicero
• ‘Every moment throughout one’s life offers an opportunity to be relaxed and responsive or to suffer unnecessarily’ – Sam Harris
• ‘However, mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names…The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise.’ – Henry David Thoreau in ‘Walden’
• ‘The most courageous decision that you can make each day is to be in a good mood.’ – Voltaire
• ‘As it is said in the Bhagavad Gita, ”You are only entitled to the action, never to its fruits.” Better, don’t even need the fruits because the action is the only part that doesn’t really suck.’ – Ryan Holiday
• ‘…there is never happiness or misfortune in this world, there is merely the comparison between one state and another, nothing more. Only someone who has suffered the deepest misfortune is capable of experiencing the heights of felicity.’ – The Count in Alexandre Dumas’ in ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’
• ‘Regret is past tense decision making. Eliminate complaining to minimise regret’ – Tim Ferriss
• ‘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
• ‘When you complain, NOBODY wants to help you’ – Tracey DiNunzio

Take the difficult path

• ‘Perhaps happiness is always to be found in the journey uphill, and not in the fleeting sense of satisfaction awaiting at the next peak’ – Jordan B Peterson
• ‘Not everything which makes us feel better is good for us. Not everything which hurts may be bad’ – Alain de Botton
• ‘We have known for millennia that resistance is the shortest path to growth…Put more weight on the bar, you get stronger. Run harder, you get faster. It’s a form of good, acute stress known as hormesis.’ – Aubrey Marcus
• ‘Difficult paths often lead to beautiful destinations’ – Unknown

Accept others as they are

• ‘There is no such thing as not giving a shit, only someone signalling that they don’t give a shit.’ – Paul Bloom
• ‘Any fool can criticise, condemn and complain – and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.’ – Dale Carniege
• The only way men or women can be judged is against the canvas of their own time – Louis L’amour

Prioritise, and be ruthless in doing so

• ‘To be free, to be happy and fruitful, can only be attained through sacrifice of many common but overestimated things’ – Robert Henri
• ‘You gotta make it a priority to make your priorities a priority.’― Richie Norton
• ‘It’s not about “having’ time”. It’s about making time. If it matters, you will make time.’ – Unknown

• ‘Never follow your passion, but always bring it with you.’ – Mike Rowe

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