Beyond Wealth

Of course, it’s not easy to find the right balance between achievement and enjoyment. But when things are out of whack, the symptoms are pretty obvious. The people around us are talking, but we aren’t listening. We’re divided between what is happening here and what is happening somewhere else. Or we’re thinking about what will happen tomorrow . . .

The ancient Masters didn’t try to educate the people, but kindly taught them to not-know. When they think that they know the answers, people are difficult to guide. When they know that they don’t know, people can find their own way.

I know of no better nutshell statement of the path to finding one’s true calling in life than the simple formula given by Aristotle: Where your talents and the needs of the world cross, there lies your vocation. These two, your talents and the needs of the world, are the great wake-up calls to your true vocation in life. To ignore either is, in som

His interest was in the principles that unite us, not the doctrines that divide us. Following Jesus’ insistence that the kingdom of Heaven is within you, Emerson sought moral universals, what he called “interior truth.” He insisted, for example, that if the Confucians in China, the stoics of Athens, the noblest Buddhists, and the wisest Christians

astronomer Carl Sagan devised an ingenious illustration. He called it his “Cosmic Calendar.” And it provides a lesson in humility. Here’s how it works: Imagine that the 13.7-billion-year history of the universe is compressed into one calendar year. The Big Bang occurred in the very first second of January 1, and the current moment is the last secon

Emily Dickinson said it about the printed word, but it could as easily apply to the other arts as well: There is no frigate like a book To take us lands away, Nor any coursers like a page Of prancing poetry. This traverse may the poorest take Without oppress of toll; How frugal is the chariot That bears a human soul!

Respect your elders. Two ears, one mouth: Listen twice as much as you talk. When you give your word, keep it. Always. Look people in the eye when you talk to them. Stand up for yourself. Smile—it doesn’t cost anything. If you don’t have the time to do it right, how will you find the time to do it over? Spend less than what you earn. Save and invest

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich . . . to study hard, to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common—this is m

“Anything else you worship,” argued David Foster Wallace at a commencement address at Kenyon College in 2005, “will almost certainly eat you alive. If you worship money and things—if they are where you tap real meaning in life—then you will never have enough. . . . Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, an

Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound. Let a man radically alter his thoughts, and he will be astonished at the rapid transformation it will effect in the material conditions of his life. Men imagine that thought can be kept secret, but it cannot; it rapidly crystallizes