Enlightenment is not about knowing as much as it is about unknowing; it is not so much learning as unlearning. It is about surrendering and letting go rather than achieving and possessing. It’s more about entering the mystery than arriving at a mental certitude.”

— Richard Rohr
On the Threshold of Transformation (p. 38)

To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.”

— Joseph Chilton Pearce

I tell you, sir,” he whispered, “it is the end of the world. Never were known such excesses of the scholars: it is the cursed inventions of the age that ruin everything: artillery, serpentines, bombards, and above all, printing, that other pestilence from Germany. No more manuscripts! No more books! Printing is cutting up the bookselling trade. The end of the world is certainly at hand!”

— Victor Hugo
The Hunchback of Notre Dame, p. 11
Originally published in 1831

Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be the miracle.”

— Phillips Brooks
U.S. Episcopal bishop (1835–1893)

A soul that is close to despair doesn’t know that it’s already standing on the brink, beyond which there lies a new path.”

— Elder Barsanuphius of Optina

If we stop learning today, we stop teaching tomorrow.”

— Howard Hendricks

The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide you’re not going to stay where you are.”

— John Pierpont Morgan

Life is like riding a bicycle, in order to keep your balance, you must keep moving.”

— Albert Einstein

I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”

— Winston Churchill

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”

— George Orwell

The man of action has the present, but the thinker commands the future from his study.”

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

A successful executive is one that solves bigger problems than he/she creates.”

— David Allen
GTD Times

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage—to move in the opposite direction.”

— Albert Einstein

It is often said that children are the wealth of the poor. This was not my experience. But books are without question the wealth of the poor’s children. Books are a guiding light out of the underworld, a secret passageway, an escape hatch. To the affluent, books are ornaments. To the poor, books are siege weapons.”

— Joe Queenan
Closing Time

I have held many things in my hand and I have lost them all. But whatever I have placed in God’s hands, that I still possess.”

— Martin Luther

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”

— Helen Keller

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Self-discipline is the ability to make yourself do something you don’t necessarily want to do, to get a result you would really like to have”

— Andy Andrews

Anxiety is nothing but repeatedly re-experiencing failure in advance. What a waste.”

— Seth Godin

Do not fear the conflict. Do not flee it. Where there is no struggle, there is no virtue. Where love and faith are not tempted, it is not possible to be sure whether they are really present. They are tried and revealed in adversity, in difficult and grievous circumstances.”

— St. John Chrysostom (c. 347–407)