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Ryan Holiday

1,219 Quotes
Author of 'Ego is the Enemy' & 'The Obstacle Is The Way'.
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1,219 quotes curated by Ryan Holiday:

“Go back to your command and try to think of what we are going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do.”
— Ulysses S. Grant, Civil War Quotes
Tagged: emotions
“The most trying thing in all this war is that people are too sanguine; they expect too much at once.”
— Abraham Lincoln, The Wilderness Campaign
Tagged: Will
“And this too shall pass away.”
— Abraham Lincoln, Address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society
Tagged: Will
“Fortune and fortitude.”
— Virgil, The Aeneid
Tagged: Will
“Even if a man fails in his efforts, it will be a satisfaction to him to enjoy the consciousness of having done his best. In humble life, nothing can be more cheery and beautiful than to see a man combatting suffering by patience, triumphing in his integrity and who, when his feet are bleeding and his limbs failing him, still walks upon his courage.”
— Samuel Smiles, Thrift
Tagged: Will
“It is will–force of purpose–that enables a man to do or be whatever he sets his mind on being or doing.”
— Samuel Smiles, Thrift
Tagged: Will
“Whether the fates will draw us on or draw us back, let's follow why they lead. Whether fortune sends, we master it all by bearing it all, we must!”
— Virgil, The Aeneid
Tagged: Will
“When one takes retrospective view of the events which occurred twenty four years ago, he cannot help but admit that this a progressive age and when he sees a building burn down he may console himself with the idea that he will live to see a finer one springing up from its ashes particularly if the old one has been well insured. There may be pleasant recollections associated with the original building for the loss of which we can never be repaid but time heals all things and we learn to do without old associations and form other and dearer ties.

I have often lamented the wicked waste of life and property cause by our civil war, but I have now learned to look upon all these matters philosophically and sometimes think it was intended the nation should pass through such an experience as children go through with their various diseases by way of preparing them for the greater trials of life.

If we take this view of the matter we may find some consolation for the events of a fratricidal war, which should never have taken place.”
— Adm David Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War
Tagged: Will
“In many respects, he was doomed to a certain loneliness of excellence. Few men that ever lived have had his stern and tyrannous sense of duty, his womanly tenderness of heart, his wakeful and inflexible conscience, which was so easy towards others and so merciless towards himself. Therefore when the time came for all of these qualities at once to be put to the most strenuous proof, the whole course of his development and tendency of his nature made it inevitable that his suffering should be of the keenest and his final triumph over himself should be of the most complete and signal character. in that struggle his youth of reveries and day dreams passed away. Such furnace blasts of proof, such pangs of transformation seem necessary for exceptional natures.”
— John Hay, All the Great Prizes: The Life of John Hay, from Lincoln to Roosevelt
Tagged: Will
“For the less the will is excited, the less we suffer.”
— Arthur Schopenhauer, Counsels and Maxims: Top of Schopenhauer
Tagged: The Process