A cavalryman’s horse should be smarter than he is. But the horse must never be alowed to know this.
Are you paralyzed with fear? That’s a good sign. Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. Remember one rule of thumb: the more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.
The opposite of love isn’t hate; it’s indifference.
Someone once asked Somerset Maughham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. “I write only when inspiration strikes,” he replied. “Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.
The drawing is also a reminder that there’s an artist within each of us, and we must encourage that artist to do the work, to make something that matters, regardless of anything else that is going on.
The artist must be like that Marine. He has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable.
The working artist will not tolerate trouble in her life because she knows trouble prevents her from doing her work.
Like us, those vanished warriors planted their standards in the sands of their own self-summoned extinction.
Once we commit to action, the worst thing we can do is to stop.
Because when we sit down day after day and keep grinding, something mysterious starts to happen. A process is set into motion by which, inevitably and infallibly, heaven comes to our aid. Unseen forces enlist in our cause; serendipity reinforces our purpose.
Assistance is the universal, immutable force of creative manifestation, whose role since the Big Bang has been to translate potential into being, to convert dreams into reality.
Habit will be your champion. When you train the mind to think one way and one way only, when you refuse to allow it to think in another, that will produce great strength in battle.
The paradox seems to be, as Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery. While those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.
This is what I feared for Michael. That his generation, so strong, so well made, so bright and aware beyond its years, would compare itself to us in envy, envy of the clarity of our challenges and the brutish obviousness of our enemies.
Crazy,′ says Paddy Mayne, ’is our business.
The American people... have had enough of sacrificing their sons and daughters in the name of some illusory world order; they want someone else’s sons and daughters to bear the burden. The American people are willing to pay for this privilege, in cash and in the circumscription of their own liberty.
Leonidas’s and Dienekes’ quips draw the individual out of his private terror and yoke him to the group.