850 Quotations Found

Every human being grows in stages of psychological development, operates at levels of consciousness and lives inside a worldview.

Author: Richard Barrett | Subjects: Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior

There’s a popular saying, “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” That’s not true. Sometimes it leaves you broken, battered, scarred. But, healing can make you stronger than you were before. or, at least, strong in a different way. And, if it doesn’t, it may just mean that you haven’t finished healing.

Author: Jeff Blum | Subjects: Concepts, Experience, Life & Society, Pain & Suffering, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

I am not sure what is more difficult — the heartache of enduring a change made against your will and without your consent, which is the foundation of all loss, or the inner turmoil of having to make a necessary change yourself, breaking the momentum of patterns propelled by a lifetime’s motive force, which in turn presupposes the loss of a familiar way of being, … [ Read more ]

Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Change, Concepts, Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior

Happiness is particularly elusive when you look for it in the future. Success, on the other hand, is often best manifested by looking and focusing on the future.

Author: Jeff Blum | Subjects: Happiness, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior, Success / Failure

A powerful shaping factor about our social and political worlds is how they are structured by group belonging and identities.

Authors: Jay Van Bavel, Philip Pärnamets | Source: Scientific American | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior

There is only one success—to be able to spend your life in your own way.

Author: Christopher Morley | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Success / Failure

Courage is knowing it might hurt, and doing it anyway. Stupidity is the same. And that’s why life is hard.

Author: Jeremy Goldberg | Subjects: Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior

He who knows and acts is the one who counts, not he who knows and falls asleep. We render a tribute of respect to those who add original work to a library, and withhold it from those who carry a library around in their head. If one is to become a mere phonograph, it is hardly worth the effort of complicating cerebral organization with study … [ Read more ]

Author: Santiago Ramón y Cajal | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Personal Improvement

All expectation is a story of the possible. Every person lives inside a story of who they are, what they are worth, and what is possible for their life, and suffers in proportion to how conscious they are of the story, how much credence they give those inner voices over the raw input of reality. It is often when life blindsides us with a bright … [ Read more ]

Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Concepts, Life & Society, Pain & Suffering, Personal Improvement, Possibility

How you talk about your experiences will dictate how you feel about them. Reframing our goals and rewriting our stories are powerful tools. Nobody can tell us how to feel about something. We can make our shortcomings into something beautiful if we want to. How we label an experience can completely change how we perceive it.

Author: Alexi Pappas | Subjects: Experience, Life & Society, Personal Improvement

[According to economist James Heckman,] innate intelligence plays, at best, a 1 to 2 percent role in a child’s future success. Instead, financial success is correlated with personality traits that make up conscientiousness: self-discipline, perseverance, and diligence. Everyone defines success differently, as well they should. […] But if you happen to define success by traditional measures, like professional achievement or fortune or fame, hard work … [ Read more ]

Author: Jeff Haden | Source: Inc. | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Success / Failure

More is missed by not looking than not knowing.

Author: Thomas McCrae | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement

Sometimes we fall in love with ideas not people.

Author: Bridgett Devoue | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior, Relationships

What lies ahead is a remarkable but wearisome journey [on a] runaway train. No one can tell you what lies ahead, least of all those who remain behind. One thing, however, they can assure you of is that it’s not a round trip. Try, therefore, to derive some comfort form the notion that no matter how unpalatable this or that station may turn out to … [ Read more ]

Author: Joseph Brodsky | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement

What’s good about boredom, about anguish and the sense of the meaninglessness of your own, of everything else’s existence, is that it is not a deception.

Author: Joseph Brodsky | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subject: Life & Society

What is boredom if not the howl of need, the need for significance.

Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subject: Life & Society

Although our habits and patterns, which hinge on repetition, give shape to our days, they can also become a prison as the vitalizing rhythm of repetition ossifies into monotonous repetitiveness.

Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement

True independence involves release from the subjugation of personal urges and weaknesses. We must stand up to our destructive desires to spend more than we have, to drink more than we should, to admire our own image, to fritter away our time, to seek the admiration of others.

Author: Arthur C. Brooks | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

Figuring out healthy ways (in all senses) to deal with boredom and aloneness (which may or may not equate to loneliness) is a key life skill. Productivity and pleasure seeking are the most common approaches, but not necessarily the best, especially if done to excess. Ideally, first learn how to be at peace with your boredom, silence, and aloneness, and then figure out alternatives to … [ Read more ]

Author: Jeff Blum | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement

When life becomes tedious to you, [Søren Kierkegaard] argued, you don’t need to look outside for something to shake up your malaise. You need instead to look inward and find what’s missing within your own heart and soul.

Author: Arthur C. Brooks | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement