Completely Unencumbered

“It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. Throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you. Trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly, on tiptoes and no luggage, completely unencumbered.”

Quote by Aldous Huxley

The Great Power

“To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves – there lies the great, singular power of self-respect.”

“Self-respect is a question of recognizing that anything worth having has a price.”

“Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life — is the source from which self-respect springs.”

All quotes by Joan Didion

What You Bring To It

“What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.”

“Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.”

“Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.”

“Do what nobody else can do for you. Omit to do anything else.”

“We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.”

“As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.”

“There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.”

“Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.”

All quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Violets in the Mountains

“Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.”

“Life is an unanswered question, but let’s still believe in the dignity and importance of the question.”

“The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.”

“A high station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.”

“There is a time for departure even when there’s no certain place to go.”

“Enthusiasm is the most important thing in life.”

“Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person.”

“Success and failure are equally disastrous.”

“Oh, you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace. What you need is someone to take hold of you – gently, with love, and hand your life back to you.”

All quotes by Tennessee Williams

Until I make It

All quotes by James Baldwin

Illustration by Victoria Cassinova

 

Do Not Fear Mistakes

“I know what the power of silence is. When I used to play in clubs, everybody was loud; there was a lot of noise. So I would take my mute off the microphone, and I would play something so soft that you could hardly hear it.”

“It’s not about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change.”

“Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.”

“Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherf*cker who plays it is 80 percent.”

“Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.”

“Do not fear mistakes. There are none.”

All quotes by Miles Davis

The Golden Opportunity

“Do not waste time dreaming of great faraway opportunities; do the best you can where you are. Open your petals of power and beauty and fling out the fragrance of your life in the place that has been assigned to you.”

“There is inestimable blessing in a cheerful spirit. When the soul throws its windows wide open, letting in the sunshine, and presenting to all who see it the evidence of its gladness, it is not only happy, but it has an unspeakable power of doing good.”

“Don’t wait for extraordinary opportunities. Seize common occasions and make them great.”

“A will finds a way.”

“Enthusiasm will steady the heart and strengthen the will; it will give force to the thought and nerve to the hand until what was only a possibility becomes a reality.”

“Our destiny changes with our thought; we shall become what we wish to become, do what we wish to do, when our habitual thought corresponds with our desire.”

“The golden opportunity you are seeking is in yourself. It is not in your environment; it is not in luck or chance, or the help of others; it is in yourself alone.”

“Our thoughts and imagination are the only real limits to our possibilities.”

“We make the world we live in and shape our own environment.”

All quotes by Orison Swett Marden