Pocket Quotes

I use my phone a lot. I don’t like that I reflexively reach for it whenever I feel an ounce of boredom. I tell myself that I want to live a deep life and think deeply about the world, but then when an opportunity to do so arises, I reach for my phone instead. In other words, my actions are not aligned with my goals and I need to change that if I want to become the best version of myself.

While looking online for a solution to this problem, I stumbled upon this YouTube video by Parker Settecase. In his video, Parker talks about his book of “pocket proverbs” where he keeps quotes that inspire him to think more deeply about the world. Instead of using his phone mindlessly when he gets bored, he pulls out his book of quotes instead and reads through it.

This sounds like the perfect solution to my problem. I already have a markdown file in my Obsidian vault full of quotes that I’ve come across over the past few years. I never knew what I was going to do with these quotes, but they resonated with me so I wrote them down. I recently finished writing all of the quotes from my markdown file into a small notebook, so I’ll know whether this idea will actually keep me off my phone or not within a few weeks.

Below are the quotes that will be going into my pocket quote book. If this sounds like something that you might be interested in, feel free to pick some quotes that resonate with you and make a pocket quote book of your own.

“I would like my life to be a statement of love and compassion — and where it isn’t, that’s where my work lies.” — Ram Dass

“No hurry, no pause.” — Laozi

“The nearer a man comes to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength.” — Marcus Aurelius

“A just society is a society that if you knew everything about it, you’d be willing to enter it in a random place.” — John Rawls

“The fairest rules are those to which everyone would agree if they did not know how much power they would have.” — John Rawls

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” — Frank Herbert, Dune

“If you really want to understand your mind, sit down and observe it.” — Joseph Goldstein

“Be simple and easy about things.” — Joseph Goldstein

“Where the way is hardest, there go thou; Follow your own path and let people talk.” — Dante

“Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself.” — Edward Abbey

“You’re only as free as your attention is.” — Sam Harris

“Here is a question worth asking: How is what you have been doing consistently for the last year or so working out for you?” — Andrew Huberman

“You are not the king of your brain. You are the creepy guy standing next to the king going ‘a most judicious choice, sire’”. — Steven Kaas

“Enlightenment is: absolute cooperation with the inevitable.” — Anthony De Mello

“No amount of anxiety makes any difference to anything that is going to happen.” — Alan Watts

“The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure very much.” — William Hazlitt

“Death makes a mockery of almost everything else we spend our lives doing.” — Sam Harris

“And what importance do I have in the courtroom of oblivion?” — Pablo Neruda

“Paths are made by walking.” — Franz Kafka

“Ask yourself these two questions regarding repetitive thoughts or actions: (1) Is this necessary? (2) Is this helpful?” — Joseph Goldstein

“In all activities, we’re practicing something. There’s some state of mind that is being practiced and cultivated. Do we stop and pay attention to what it is?” — Joseph Goldstein

“As long as you live, keep learning how to live.” — Seneca

“You can feed your distractions, or you can feed your focus, but remember — there’s only food for one.” — Unknown

“We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and to create as many new desires and synthetic passions as possible, in order to cater to them with the products of our factories and printing presses and movie studios and all the rest.” — Thomas Merton

“Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.” — Miyamoto Musashi

“One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.” — Abraham Maslow

“You will be miserable to the degree that you are hung up on the notion that things should—must—go a certain way. If you have no fixed view, you remain elastic.” — Alan Watts

“There are at least a billion people on earth at this moment who would consider their prayers answered if they could trade places with you.” — Sam Harris

“One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels.” — Gustave Flaubert

“If you could strip away all your concepts—and you were to see the world afresh—how much freedom would that give you?” — Shamil Chandaria

“In the end, just three things matter: How well we have lived. How well we have loved. How well we have learned to let go.” — Jack Cornfield

“Suffering is part of our training program for becoming wise” — Ram Dass

“The boundary to what we can accept is the boundary to our freedom.” — Tara Brach

“Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” — Unknown

“Our capacity to make peace with another person and with the world depends very much on our capacity to make peace with ourselves.” — Thich Nhat Hanh

“The beginning is always today.” — Mary Wollstonecraft

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” — Henry David Thoreau

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.” — Plutarch

“He who treads softly goes far.” — Chinese proverb

“Don’t criticize people; they are just what we would be under similar circumstances.” — Abraham Lincoln

“Don’t complain about the snow on your neighbor’s roof when your own doorstep is unclean.” — Confucius

“A great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little men.” — Thomas Carlyle

“If you tell me how you go about getting your feeling of importance, I’ll tell you what you are. That determines your character. That is the most significant thing about you.” — Dale Carnegie

“I shall pass this way but once; any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.” — Etienne de Grellet

“Close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world and you will remember the lesson you forgot.” — Jack Kerouac (on interoception and our ability to control perception, which is an abstraction).

“This is not a dress rehearsal — this is the show.” — Sam Harris

“Until we understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves.” — Adrienne Rich

“The quieter you become, the more you can hear.” — Ram Dass

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” — Viktor Frankl

“Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.” — Henry James

“Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it.” — Haruki Murakami

“The way out of our cage begins with accepting absolutely everything about ourselves and our lives.” — Tara Brach

“If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.” — Epictetus

“Just as a snake sheds its skin, we must shed our past over and over again.” — Jack Kornfield

“In the end, we’ll all become stories.” — Margaret Atwood

“If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace. If you let go completely, you will have complete peace.” — Ajahn Chah

“Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.” — Richard Feynman

“Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow.” — Swedish proverb

“Patience is a form of wisdom. It demonstrates that we understand and accept the fact that sometimes things must unfold in their own time.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn

“Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.” — Wendell Berry

“You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.” — David Foster Wallace

“Life’s under no obligation to give us what we expect.” — Margaret Mitchell

“Things take the time they take. Don’t worry.” — Mary Oliver

“Letting go of our images of who are is a way of letting go of the known, which is our prison.” — Pema Chödrön

“It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.” — Ram Dass

“You can’t live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.” — John Wooden

“Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.” — David Foster Wallace

“There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.” — Seneca

“Zen pretty much comes down to three things — everything changes; everything is connected; pay attention.” — Jane Hirshfield

“Nothing will work unless you do.” — Maya Angelou

“Happiness is available. Please help yourself to it. “ — Thich Nhat Hanh

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” — Flannery O’Connor

“Our life is frittered away by detail…simplify, simplify, simplify.” — Henry David Thoreau

“I am a series of small victories and large defeats and I am as amazed as any other that I have gotten from there to here.” — Charles Bukowski

“Nothing human is alien to me.” — Terence

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves” — Carl Jung

“Tell me not your politics or your religion — tell me your suffering.” — Unknown

“Ask large questions and you’ll live a large and interesting journey. Ask small questions, and it all gets diminished.” — James Hollis

“Wherever you are, be there totally.” — Eckhart Tolle

“Let come what comes, let go what goes. See what remains” — Ramana Maharshi

“Change breaks the brittle” — Jan Houtema

“Don’t worry about what anyone else is going to do. The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” — Alan Kay

“Dealing with failure is easy: Work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle: You’ve solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve.” — Alan Perlis

“The imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.” — Richard Feynman

“The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.” — Louis Brandeis

“Many who burnt heretics in the ordinary way of their business were otherwise excellent people.” — G. M. Trevelyan, Bias in History

“We’re even wrong about which mistakes we’re making.” — Carl Winfeld

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.” — Mark Twain

“However little television you watch, watch less.” — David McCullough

“The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.” — Goering at the Nuremberg Trials

“Focusing is about saying no.” — Steve Jobs

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” — Sherlock Holmes

“Don’t fear moving slowly. Fear standing still.” — Chinese proverb

“The population is made up of four types of people: A small number hunt witches. A large number go along with the hunt. A larger number are silent. A tiny number oppose it. The final group — as if by magic — become witches.” — Bret Weinstein

“If you want to have good ideas, you must have many ideas.” — Linus Pauling

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” — Annie Dillard

“I never understand anything until I have written about it.” — Horace Walpole

“If you had one hour to live and could only make one phone call—who would you call, what would you say, and why are you waiting?” — Stephen Levine

“Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.” — Corrie ten Boom

“Grant that I may be given appropriate difficulties and sufferings on this journey so that my heart may be truly awakened and my practice of liberation and universal compassion may be truly fulfilled.” — Tibetan prayer

“Wherever you go, there you are.” — Jon Kabat-Zinn

“To live happily is an inward power of the soul.” — Marcus Aurelius

“What is soft is strong.” — Lao Tzu

“If I’m not for myself, who will be for me? But if I’m only for myself, who am I? And if not now, then when?” — Hillel the Elder

“Our emotions, moods, and bad character traits are just temporary and circumstantial elements of our nature.” — Matthieu Ricard

“Most people never ask, and that’s what separates the people who do things from the people who just dream about them.” — Steve Jobs

“What would you do if you weren’t afraid?” ― Spencer Johnson

“Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come it.” — Alan Alda

“No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.” — Buddha

“A life not examined is a life not worth living.” — Socrates

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” — Aristotle

“The cure for the pain is in the pain.” — Rumi

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” — Rumi

“Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” — Victor Hugo

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” — Mary Oliver

“Without great solitude no serious work is possible.” — Pablo Picasso

“The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.” — Lin Yutang

“’I wish it need not have happened in my time,’ said Frodo. ‘So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.’” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“To follow, without halt, one aim: there is the secret to success.” — Anna Pavlova

“Courage is grace under pressure.” — Ernest Hemingway

“Half of the troubles of this life can be traced to saying yes too quickly and not saying no soon enough.” — Josh Billings

“Every great change starts like falling dominos.” — BJ Thornton

“It is those who concentrate on but one thing at a time who advance in this world.” — Og Mandino

“To attain knowledge add things every day. To attain wisdom subtract things every day.” — Lao Tzu

“Beware the barrenness of a busy life.” — Socrates

“There is an art to clearing away the clutter and focusing on what matters most. It is simple and it is transferable. It just requires the courage to take a different approach.” — George Anders

“I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be compassionate. It is, above all, to matter, to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all.” — Leo Rosten

“Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another.” — Walter Elliot

“You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” — Maya Angelou

“Forever is composed of nows.” — Emily Dickinson

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.” — Richard Feynman

“It is not impermanence that makes us suffer. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not.” — Thich Nhat Hanh

“Peace is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it.” — Thomas Merton

“So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.” — Chief Tecumseh

“Look very closely: only impermanence lasts. The floating world, too, will pass.” — Ikkyū

“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.” — Steve Jobs

“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.” — Seneca

“Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you’d think the mere fact of existing would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise.” — Lewis Thomas

“Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are.” — José Saramago

“The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence.” — Thich Nhat Hanh

“If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.” — Pema Chödrön

“Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.” — Terry Pratchett

“Anyone driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone driving faster than you is a maniac.” — George Carlin

“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak” — Hans Hofmann

“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” — Zora Neale Hurston

“Waking up to who you are requires letting go of who you imagine yourself to be.” — Alan Watts

“You don’t have to control your thoughts. You just have to stop letting them control you.” — Dan Millman