I hate, where I looked for a manly furtherance, or at least a manly resistance, to find a mush of concession. Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo. The condition which high friendship demands is ability to do without it. That high office requires great and sublime parts. There must be very two, before there can be very one. Let it be an alliance of two large, formidable natures…
–Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friendship
How hard you’ve worked at preparation gives you the will to win.
Bobby Knight
The desert tests all men. It challenges every step and kills those who become distracted.
–The Alchemist, from The Alchemist
Thought being unseen substance is absorbed by all. If you absorb another person’s thought, it mingles with your own, then in part, if not in whole, you will think that person’s thought. You will, to some extent, see, feel, judge, and form opinion as does that person. You are to greater or lesser extent swayed or influenced by the person. His or her thought, or spirit, has mingled with yours. You are not then wholly yourself, you are in part, that other person…
–Prentice Mulford, Thoughts Are Things
Much of what is called the oppression of the strong over the weak, the rich over the poor, comes because so many of the poor do not aspire above a pig pen under the window, a mud puddle in the back yard, and a front garden growing tomato cans, dead cats, and old hoop skirts.
–Prentice Mulford, Thoughts Are Things
In contrast to other forms of Buddhism, that consider the elimination of earthly desires the key to happiness, Nichiren Buddhism teaches that earthly desires are enlightenment. In other words, any and every determination we might ever make has a duel purpose; not only to enable us to accomplish whatever goal we’ve set for ourselves, but also in the process, to induce personal growth. For only as a direct result of struggling to fulfill our desires, of facing and overcoming the obstacles that arise in the process, are we able to acquire wisdom that increases our resilience and thus our ability to enjoy life.
Alex Lickerman, The Undefeated Mind
