It’s only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and overthink and hesitate.
When we raise our game aesthetically, we elevate it morally and spiritually as well.
A king does not expend his substance to enslave men, but by his conduct and example makes them free.
Instead of applying self-knowledge, self-discipline, delayed gratification and hard work, we simply consume a product.
That was when I realized I had become a pro. I had not yet had a success. But I had had a real failure.
There’s no mystery to turning pro. It’s a decision brought about by an act of will.
The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit. We don’t just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed. Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny. This second, we can turn the tables on Resistance. This second, we can sit down and do our work.
The rancor I once bore recedes, supplanted by admiration and a sense even of loss at the mates we might have been and the times we might have shared.
Indeed, we own a bond, my friend. That most sublime of all: reminiscence for our vanished youth.
What could be more natural for this man than to draw to his bosom all with whom he shared that time, even his foes? Perhaps his foes more than any.
When inspiration touches talent, she gives birth to truth and beauty.
Resistance has no strength of its own. Every ounce of juice it possesses comes from us. We feed it with power by our fear of it. Master that fear and we conquer Resistance.
Each man recalls not the enemy he hated, but the champion who engaged him with such valor.
The Spartans do not ask how many are the enemy but where are they. – Plutarch Sayings of the Spartans.
When Krishna instructed Arjuna that we have a right to our labor but not to the fruits of our labor, he was counseling the warrior to act territorially, not hierarchically. We must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or attention or applause.
The professional keeps his eye on the doughnut and not on the hole. He reminds himself it’s better to be in the arena, getting stomped by the bull, than to be up in the stands or out in the parking lot.
Call it overstatement but I’ll say it anyway: it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank square of canvas.
We get ourselves in trouble because it’s a cheap way to get attention. Trouble is a faux form of fame. It’s easier to get busted in the bedroom with the faculty chairman’s wife than it is to finish that dissertation on the metaphysics of motley in the novellas of Joseph Conrad.
In my view, the amateur does not love the game enough. If he did, he would not pursue it as a sideline, distinct from his “real” vocation.
The payoff for a life of adversity is freedom.