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 7th blog post in this series called ‘Miscellaneous’ which contains all the other quotes I love but which didn’t fall into the previous 6 categories. focused on ‘Y’. 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!

Random selection of my favourite quotes which don’t fit into the other 6 categories

• ‘The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.’ – William Gibson
• ‘What the Net [internet] seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation.’ – Nicholas G Carr
• ‘Tradition is a set of solutions for which we have forgotten the problems. Throw away the solution and you get the problem back. Sometimes the problem has mutated or disappeared. Often it is still there as strong as it ever was.’ – Donald Kingsbury
• ‘Morality is simply the attitude we adopt toward people we personally dislike’ – Oscar Wilde
• ‘The secrets of life are hidden behind the word “cliché”’- ShayCarl
• ‘A journal…it either tells a lot of truths to cover a single lie or a lot of lies to cover a single truth.’  – Christopher Knight (The Maine Hermit for 27 years)
• ‘The mind depends upon the body, and the body upon the world, but everything good or bad that happens in your life must appear in consciousness to matter’ – Sam Harris
• ‘Moral wounds have the peculiarity that they are invisible, but do not close: always painful, always ready to bleed when touched, they remain tender and open in the heart.’ – From The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
• ‘People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don’t realise how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world.’ – Calvin, from Calvin & Hobbes
• ‘Treat the Earth well. It was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children.’ – Huston Smith
• ‘Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause & reflect.’ – Mark Twain
• ‘A story is about significant events and memorable moments, not about time passing’ – Daniel Kahneman
• ‘I shall pass this way but once; any good therefore, that I can do it, any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.’ – Dale Carnegie
• ‘Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages. Bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.’ – Advert by Ernest Shackleton before his 1914 attempt to explore Antarctica
• ‘Everything is necessary, everything needs only my agreement, my assent, my loving understanding; then all is well with me and nothing can harm me.’ – Herman Hesse in Siddhartha

And the most important of all…

• ‘I love quotes… but in the end, knowledge has to be converted to action or it’s worthless.’ — Tony Robbins

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