Tg > Tg's Quotes

“Only those who decline to scramble up the career ladder are interesting as human beings. Nothing is more boring than a man with a career.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“when he was ædile, he provided such a number of gladiators, that he entertained the people with three hundred and twenty single combats, and by his great liberality and magnificence in theatrical shows, in processions, and public feastings, he threw into the shade all the attempts that had been made before him, and gained so much upon the people, that every one was eager to find out new offices and new honors for him in return for his munificence.”
― Plutarch, Parallel Lives

“Jung says, “Here one may ask, perhaps, why it is so desirable that a man should be individuated. Not only is it desirable, it is absolutely indispensable because through his contamination with others he falls into situations and commits actions that bring him into disharmony with himself. From all states of unconscious contamination and non-differentiation, there is begotten a compulsion to be and to act in a way contrary to one’s own nature...For these reasons individuation is indispensable for certain people, not only as a therapeutic necessity, but as a high ideal, an idea of the best we can do. Nor should I omit to remark that it is at the same time the primitive Christian ideal of the Kingdom of Heaven that ‘is within you.’ The idea at the bottom of this ideal is that right action comes from right thinking, and there is no cure and no improving of the world that does not begin with the individual himself.”
― Bud Harris, Becoming Whole: A Jungian Guide to Individuation

“ The Paradoxical Commandments

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.”
― Kent M. Keith, The Silent Revolution: Dynamic Leadership in the Student Council

“Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.”
― Baruch Spinoza, Ethics

“Everything excellent is as difficult as it is rare.”
― Baruch Spinoza, Ethics

“Those who wish to seek out the cause of miracles and to understand the things of nature as philosophers, and not to stare at them in astonishment like fools, are soon considered heretical and impious, and proclaimed as such by those whom the mob adores as the interpreters of nature and the gods. For these men know that, once ignorance is put aside, that wonderment would be taken away, which is the only means by which their authority is preserved.”
― Baruch De Spinoza, Ethics

“Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.”
― Baruch Spinoza, Ethics

“We feel and experience ourselves to be eternal.”
― Baruch Spinoza, Ethics

“A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation, not on death, but on life.”
― Baruch Spinoza, Ethics

“Do not read as children do to enjoy themselves, or, as the ambitious do to educate themselves. No, read to live.”
― Gustave Flaubert

“Perhaps this was one of the tragedies life plots for us: it is our destiny to become in old age what in youth we would have most despised.”
― Julian Barnes, The Noise of Time

“You know someone is truly special when the most beautiful thing they have on is a kind soul.”
― Matshona Dhliwayo

“Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self Reliance

“It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection.”
― Anonymous, The Bhagavad Gita

“The happiness which comes from long practice, which leads to the end of suffering, which at first is like poison, but at last like nectar - this kind of happiness arises from the serenity of one's own mind.”
― Ved Vyasa, The Bhagavad Gita

“He who has let go of hatred
who treats all beings with kindness
and compassion, who is always serene,
unmoved by pain or pleasure,

free of the "I" and "mine,"
self-controlled, firm and patient,
his whole mind focused on me ---
that is the man I love best.”
― anonymous, The Bhagavad Gita

“Set thy heart upon thy work, but never on its reward.”
― Ved Vyasa, The Bhagavad Gita

“For the senses wander, and when one lets the mind follow them, it carries wisdom away like a windblown ship on the waters.”
― Anonymous, The Bhagavad Gita

“The wise grieve neither for the living nor for the dead. There was never a time when you and I and all the kings gathered here have not existed and nor will there be a time when we will cease to exist.”
― Anonymous, The Bhagavad Gita

“Perform all work carefully, guided by compassion.”
― Ved Vyasa, The Bhagavad Gita

“Even Kings and emperors with heaps of wealth and vast dominion cannot compare with an ant filled with the love of God.”
― Guru Nanak, Sri Guru Granth Sahib

“Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to godliness.”
― Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals

“Faith is the strength of life. If a man lives he believes in something. If he did not believe that one must live for something, he would not live. If he does not see and recognize the illusory nature of the finite, he believes in the finite; if he understands the illusory nature of the finite, he must believe in the infinite. Without faith he cannot live.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“Keep the extent of your abilities unknown.The wise man does not allow his knowledge and abilities to be sounded to the bottom, if he desires to be honored at all. He allows you to know them but not to comprehend them. No one must know the extent of his abilities, lest he be disappointed. No one ever has an opportunity of fathoming him entirely. For guesses and doubts about the extent of his talents arouse more veneration than accurate knowledge of them, be they ever so great.”
― Baltasar Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom: A Pocket Oracle

“For the advice in a joke is sometimes more useful than the most serious teaching.”
― Balthasar Gracian, The Art of Worldly Wisdom

“Be first the master of yourself”
― Balthasar Gracian, The Art of Worldly Wisdom

“One should cultivate good habits of memory, for it is capable of making existence a Paradise or an Inferno.”
― Baltasar Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom: A Pocket Oracle

“The happy are an exception who enjoy innocently their simple happiness.”
― Baltasar Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom: A Pocket Oracle

“I mean one has to discard all the promises, all the experiences, all the mystical assertions. I think one has to start as though one knew absolutely nothing. Needleman: That is very hard. KRISHNAMURTI: No, Sir, I don’t think that is hard. I think it is hard only for those people who have filled themselves with other people’s knowledge. Needleman: Isn’t that most of us? I was speaking to my class yesterday at San Francisco State, and I said I was going to interview Krishnamurti and what question would you like me to ask him. They had many questions, but the one that touched me most was what one young man said: “I have read his books over and over again and I can’t do what he says.” There was something so clear about that, it rang a bell. It seems in a certain subtle sense to begin in this way. To be a beginner, fresh! KRISHNAMURTI: I don’t think that we question enough. Do you know what I mean? Needleman: Yes.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Awakening of Intelligence