“I spent my life folded between the pages of books. In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.”

When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike. Powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less. The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish.

“It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.”

If someone is not treating you with love and respect, it is a gift if they walk away from you. If that person doesn’t walk away, you will surely endure many years of suffering with him or her. Walking away may hurt for a while, but your heart will eventually heal. Then you can choose what you really want. You will find that you don’t need to trust others as much as you need to trust yourself to make the right choices.

You can die from someone else’s misery—emotional states are as infectious as diseases. You may feel you are helping the drowning man but you are only precipitating your own disaster. The unfortunate sometimes draw misfortune on themselves; they will also draw it on you. Associate with the happy and fortunate instead.

The philosophy of Stoicism argues the idea that the only pain you really suffer is the one you create yourself.

All pain stems from resistance to things you can’t change. Negative events happen all the time for reasons beyond our control. We can, however, choose how we respond to them.

Pain is simply the result of your resistance to everything you are powerless to change.

We spend a lot of time thinking about the future and the past, but we can only live in the present and thus have no way of changing many things that make us unhappy.

You teach people how to treat you by the way you treat yourself.
If you want to make a good impression, giving yourself the value you deserve is crucial. Before expecting people to value you, think well of you, and admire you, you have to value you, think well of you and admire you. Do you follow?

You can’t expect others to believe in you if you don’t believe in you, yet. Start being proud of yourself, of who you are, of where you come from, and of what you do for a living. This is not the time to be modest! Careful though. It’s also not the time to be arrogant. I’m talking about healthy self-esteem. Knowing who you are, knowing your strength, but also knowing that you are not better than anybody else (and remembering that nobody is better than you either).

Just as you can become spiritually rich and physically rich, so too can you become mentally rich — and you can do this using four methods together:
1. Looking for the positive
2. Developing an abundance mindset
3. Making the right choices with limited information
4. Committing to lifelong learning

But first, notice what is not on the list. Mental wealth doesn’t mean having a money-savvy mindset, which is what most people mean when they speak about, write of, hype up, or sell you on “good mindset habits.”
Rather, mental wealth means a worldview based on timeless principles, as well as a flexible mind that can change when new information comes to light — and living it out. It’s not enough to know; one must also do.

You as a personality are not in competition with any other personality simply because there is not another person on the face of the earth like you, or in your particular class.
You are an individual. You are unique. You are not “like” any other person and can never become “like” any other person. You are not “supposed” to be like any other person and no other person is “supposed” to be like you.

We can only open ourselves to love when it happens naturally.
Our best path into such openness is to be as loving as we can be and give up concern for whether others respond in kind.
We love because we love, not to cajole anyone to love us back.
Paradoxically, a non-expecting love is the most likely to awaken love in others toward us.

Everything you bring into the universe comes back to you. How you think, feel and act influences the progression of your life. The law of attraction exists. Like attracts like. When you maintain a positive mindset, you can obtain opportunities and achieve positive results.

When you visualize your goals and dreams, it can contribute to their realization.
When you practice gratitude for what you have, it becomes more and when you surround yourself with uplifting people you become more positive.

Whatever you send out into the universe will be returned to you. The more kindness you spread, the kindlier you will be treated. The more love you give to others, the more love you will receive. The more happiness you choose, the happier you will be. Not immediately, but eventually.

Yesterday the river was passing through a desert, today it is passing through a forest; it is totally different. Yesterday’s experience should not become your definition forever; otherwise you died yesterday.
One should be able to go on moving with time. One should remain a process, one should never become a thing. That is intelligence.

It is impossible to control someone else’s thoughts.
Therefore, fearing what other people think — or trying to control their thoughts — is a complete waste of your time.
You will never feel in control of your life, your feelings, your thoughts, or your actions until you stop being consumed with or trying to control what other people think about you.

When you declare that you’ll never find love because you just went through a breakup, or consider yourself fundamentally awful looking because you’re not loving your outfit today, or you’re sinking in the feeling that you’ll never find your way in life because you feel lost right now — what you’re doing is extrapolating.

Extrapolation is the projection of a single experience into a long-term assumption about life.

“This moment is not your life, this is a moment in your life.” — Ryan Holiday

Just because you’re temporarily having a negative experience does not mean it will define the rest of your life.

What you’re really saying is that you can’t see a way out of your current circumstances — because in some way, you don’t completely control them.

Good thoughts and actions can never produce bad results; bad thoughts and actions can never produce good results. This is but saying that nothing can come from corn but corn, nothing from nettles but nettles. Men understand this law in the natural world and work with it; but few understand it in the mental and moral world (though its operation there is just as simple and undeviating), and they, therefore, do not co-operate with it.

Perhaps you are familiar with an arresting, provocative image known as Your Life in Weeks. The visualization, popularized by blogger Tim Urban in 2014, is still in wide circulation a decade later. Here it is, in case you missed it:

How small and finite life feels when you see it represented like this, as a series of identical squares that can easily fit on one page.

It’s a visual reminder that our time is limited — and incredibly precious.