Beautiful Sentiments

In a single sentence, author Virginia Woolf encourages us to live with a strong foundation — to know our values and be grounded in a strong sense of self — but to remain adaptable and open to life:

"I am rooted, but I flow."

“Montaigne, the great French philosopher, adopted these seventeen words as the motto of his life: ‘A man is not hurt so much by what happens, as by his opinion of what happens.’ And our opinion of what happens is entirely up to us.”

"Let us ask the gods not for possessions, but for things to do; happiness is in making things rather than in consuming them. In Utopia, said Thoreau, each would build his own home; and then song would come back to the heart of man, as it comes to the bird when it builds its nest. If we cannot build our homes, we can at least walk and throw and run;... See more

Author and screenwriter Ray Bradbury on the difference between critics and creators:

"Those who don't build must burn."

Source: Fahrenheit 451

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.”

​ — David Foster Wallace, This is Water

Intelligence is a form of friendship with the world. It can’t be cultivated out of fear of it.