2019 Noteworthy Notes

I am a quote junkie. I've been collecting them for years. Each year I compile quotes that strike a "note" with me, and I share them at the end of the year. None are authored by me, and I had given attribution when it was available, or I remembered where I obtained the quote. Here is this year's list. Happy New Year and here's to the next decade!

• "Every time you wake up and ask yourself, 'What good things am I going to do today?' remember that, when the sun goes down at sunset, it will take a part of your life with it."
• “The dynamic of friendship is almost always underestimated as a constant force in human life: a diminishing circle of friends is the first terrible diagnostic of a life in deep trouble: of overwork, of too much emphasis on a professional identity, of forgetting who will be there when our armored personalities run into the inevitable natural disasters and vulnerabilities found in even the most average existence. But no matter the medicinal virtues of being a true friend or sustaining a long close relationship with another, the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self; the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.”— David Whyte
• “I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other.”― Rainer Maria Rilke
• “If all you did was just looked for things to appreciate, you would live a joyously spectacular life.”
• There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.” Vesalius
• A genius is the one most like himself.
• Most failures are one-time costs. Most regrets are recurring costs. The pain of inaction stings longer than the pain of incorrect action. - James Clear—
• "A good marriage is one in which each spouse secretly thinks he or she got the better deal, and this is true also of our friendships.”
• Your effort sets your floor. Your strategy sets your ceiling. - James Clear
• The purpose of life, as far as I can tell, is to find a mode of being that’s so meaningful that the fact that life is suffering is no longer relevant. Peterson
• You can’t awaken someone that’s pretending to be asleep
• “To a disciple who was forever complaining about others, the Master said, ‘If it is peace you want, seek to change yourself, not other people. It is easier to protect your feet with slippers than to carpet the whole of the earth.’”— Anthony de Mello
• Gut reactions are usually very wrong or very right; They tend to be wrong when they are based purely on emotion and in domains where you lack experience. They tend to be right when they are rooted in deep understanding and well-developed taste. Trust your gut when you have the experience to back it up. - James Clear
• Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see.”― Arthur Schopenhauer
• Your body adapts to what you eat.Your mind adapts to what you consume.; Your soul adapts to what you love.; What you feed yourself today is who you become tomorrow. - James Clear
• I can’t outmarket a bad reputation- Marcia Barnes 
• People don’t want advice, they want confirmation
• LOVE=acting in the long term best interest of another - Marcia Barnes
• “No person would give up even an inch of their estate, and the slightest dispute with a neighbor can mean hell to pay, yet we easily let others encroach on our lives—worse, we often pave the way for those who will take it over. No person hands out their money to passersby, but to how many do each of us hand out our lives! We’re tight-fisted with property and money, yet think too little of wasting time, the one thing about which we should all be the toughest misers.”— Seneca the Younger
•  "In the end, only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you." – Buddha
• The first to apologize is the bravest. The first to forgive is the strongest. And the first to forget is the happiest."
• The person who says that it cannot be done should not interrupt the person that’s doing it 
• 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― Helen Schucman
• Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder. - Rumi 
• A lot of people give credit to God, just not a lot of cash - Stanley Tam
• I'm living in a country song
• Common sense is not so common - Scott Abbott
• Thankfully persistence is a great substitute for talent-Steve Martin
• Systemize the predictable so you can humanize the exceptional - Isador Sharp
• Homes are graves for the living (go outside)
• “Those who do not weep, do not see.”— Victor Hugo
• I could sell a double bed to the Pope
• Sloppy success is better than imperfect mediocrity
• “It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship, that makes unhappy marriages.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche
• “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.”-William Gibson
• Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown-Shakespeare Henry IV
• “To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life.” ― T.S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism
• “It is impossible for a person to begin to learn what he thinks he already knows.”
• Our bodies are apt to be our autobiographies. — Frank Gelett Burgess
• “If we can forgive what's been done to us... If we can forgive what we've done to others... If we can leave our stories behind. Our being victims and villains. Only then can we maybe rescue the world.”— Chuck Palahniuk
• Timid salespeople have skinny kids
• “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”― Pablo Picasso
• “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” Upton Sinclair
• “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.”― Jalaluddin Rumi
• “To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.”— Henri Poincaré
• “It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we discover.”― Henri Poincaré
• “Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you.”- Ovid
• Being challenged in life is inevitable, being defeated is optional. 
• “It doesn’t matter what you want to do if you don’t do anything.”
• “Knowing what must be done does away with fear. “
• “Notice the best part”
• “That which hinders your task... is your task.”
• “Nothing is, everything is becoming”
• "it may not be your fault, but it is your responsibility"
• “Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.”— Anne Lamott
• “I will have to remember ‘I am here today to cross the swamp, not to fight all the alligators.’” — From The Art of Possibility by Rosamund and Benjamin Zander
• Krulak’s Law states that the future of an organization is in the hands of the privates in the field, not the generals back home.
• “In your actions, don’t procrastinate. In your conversations, don’t confuse. In your thoughts, don’t wander. In your soul, don’t be passive or aggressive. In your life, don’t be all about business.” 
• “A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” Herbert Simon
• “It is amateurs who have one big bright beautiful idea that they can never abandon. Professionals know that they have to produce theory after theory before they are likely to hit the jackpot.”― Francis Crick
• Hope-ium
• “If you wish to improve, be content to appear clueless or stupid in extraneous matters."— Epictetus
•  Do you know why middle-age women gain weight? Eating their words that “my kid would never...”
• Earning trust outperforms earning envy. Seth Godin
• Death is the number 1 killer in the world.
• Life is sexually transmitted.
• Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
• Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day. Teach a person to use the Internet and they won’t bother you for weeks, months, maybe years.
• Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in the hospital, dying of nothing.
• All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism.
• In the 60’s, people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird, and people take Prozac to make it normal.