33 Quotes That Will Change How You Live Your Life

I recently asked people the question, “If all of the highlights from the books you’ve read disappear except for 5… which 5 highlights would you choose to keep?

So I decided to think deeply on that question and select mine. I’ve read hundreds of books and have tens of thousands of highlights and quotes so distilling it down was not easy. So in my typical ways I couldn’t contain myself to just 5 so here are my 33 favorite highlights and quotes that as of May 2023 are having the most profound impact on me. 

In no particular order

I

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

-Howard Thurman

II

“I was 45 years old, and I’d been conducting for 20 years or more and suddenly I had the realization for the first time that the conductor of an orchestra doesn’t make a sound. Now my picture appears on the front of the CD. But the conductor doesn’t actually make a sound. He depends for his power on his ability to make other people powerful. And when that occurred to me, it was so profound, it had such an effect on me that people in the orchestra said, Ben, what happened to you? And that’s what happened. I realized that my job was to awaken possibility in other people.

Now the real question became was I doing that. And the way you find out whether you’re doing that is to look at their eyes. And if the eyes are shining you know you’re doing it. 

And if the eyes are not shining, you get to ask the question. 

And this is the question: who am I being that my players’ eyes are not shining?”

– Benjamin Zander

III

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

― Mary Oliver

IV

“Escape competition through authenticity. No one can compete with you, on being you.”

-Naval Ravikant

V

“I cursed the fact I had no shoes until I saw the man who had no feet.”

-Persian proverb

VI

“You were born with potential.

You were born with goodness and trust. You were born with ideals and dreams. You were born with greatness.

You were born with wings.

You are not meant for crawling, so don’t.

You have wings.

Learn to use them and fly.”

— Rumi

VII

“If you are doing something you would do for nothing, then you are on your way to salvation. And if you could drop it in a minute and forget the outcome, you are even further along. And if, while you are doing it, you are transported into another existence, there is no need for you to worry about the future.”

–Dr. George Sheehan, Running and Being

VIII

“The highest life you can live is when every single moment that passes before you is better off because it did. Serve the present moment with all your heart and soul. Imagine what the world would be like if everyone did that.”

–Michael Singer, Living Untethered 

IX

“We suffer more in imagination than in reality.”

-Seneca

X

Inscribed on five of the six pillars in the Holocaust Memorial at Quincy Market in Boston are stories that speak of the cruelty and suffering in the camps. The sixth pillar presents a tale of a different sort, about a little girl named Ilse, a childhood friend of Guerda Weissman Kline, in Auschwitz. Guerda remembers that Ilse, who was about six years old at the time, found one morning a single raspberry somewhere in the camp. Ilse carried it all day long in a protected place in her pocket, and in the evening, her eyes shining with happiness, she presented it to her friend Guerda on a leaf. “Imagine a world,” writes Guerda, “in which your entire possession is one raspberry, and you give it to your friend.”

XI

“Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is that everything around you that you call ‘life’ was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”

– Steve Jobs

XII

“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.”

-Joseph Campbell

XIII

“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure that you seek.”

-Joseph Campbell

XIV

“If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

XV

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.”

– W.H. Murray

XVI

Our greatest tendency is to cheat ourselves. We think we can enjoy the fullness and richness of life without paying for it. 

“We lead lives inferior to ourselves.” as William James said. But a great life requires struggle. What matters is making the most of what each of us was born with and pursuing our own excellence. 

We all share one power infinitely more important than talent: willpower. In this power all of us are created equal. Each of us is capable of the ideal or moral action, which William James defined in this way: “It is the action in the line of the greatest resistance.” 

ANYONE so inclined can decide on ideal action. The will considers the question, Will you or won’t you have it so? And in that decision you can be the equal of anyone else. “Effort is the measure of a man”, wrote James. So each of us makes the choice of the effort we will give. 

– Dr. George Sheehan, Personal Best 

XVII

“Mastery is the best goal because the rich can’t buy it, the impatient can’t rush it, the privileged can’t inherit it, and nobody can steal it. You can only earn it through hard work. Mastery is the ultimate status.”

– Derek Sivers, How To Live 

XVIII

“You have to live a life that, if everyone lived it, there would be peace. If you can’t do that, you are part of the problem, not the solution.”

– Michael Singer, Living Untethered 

XIX

“We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.”

~ Carlos Castaneda

XX

“In one bold stroke you can transform today.”

Marilyn Grey

XXI

“One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.”

– Sigmund Freud

XXII

“If you’re looking for a formula for greatness, the closest we’ll ever get is this: consistency driven by a deep love of the work.”

— Maria Popova

XXIII

“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do, there are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the earth.”

-Rumi

XXIV

Even after all this time, The sun never says to the earth, “You owe me.” Look what happens with a love like that, It lights the whole sky.

-Hafiz

XXV

If God

Invited you to a party

And said,

‘Everyone

In the ballroom tonight

Will be my special

Guest…’

How would you then treat them

When you

Arrived?

Indeed, indeed!

And I know

There is no one in this world

Who

Is not upon

His Jeweled Dance

Floor

-Hafiz

XXVI

“I know only two things,” a student said to Rollo May. “One, I will be dead someday; two, I am not dead now. The only question is what I shall do between those points.”

XXVII

Quincy Jones understands magic. He sees the universe as an infinite playground of

magical possibilities. He recognizes miraculous potential in every moment and every

thing and everyone around him. His superpower is that he has learned to present himself

to the universe as a lightning rod, placing himself perfectly to capture and conduct the

ever-present, ever-recurring magical flashes of brilliance surrounding us all.

Quincy Jones is an intuitive, artistic storm chaser. He can sense the subtle flickerings of the

impossible preparing to strike.

Quincy used to say, ‘Things are always impossible, right up until they’re not!” He leamed

how to prepare the environment and invited the energy in; he saw himself as the

“conductor,” both in the electrical sense and the musical definition. His main job was to keep

all of us from missing the miracle, from blocking the subtle magical opportunity that was

obviously (to him) presenting itself.

Even though these possibilities are abundantly and perpetually flowing around us, we

can miss them, or even worse, block or repel them.

This was an idea that Quincy understood fully. Magic demands awareness (faith–you have to

believe in magic); preparation (move the rock-we must identify and eradicate the poisonous

resistances and impediments within ourselves); then, surrender (stay out of the way and trust

the magic to do what it does).

Quincy helped people get their rocks out of the way of the blessed light that is always trying to

shine in. The universe wants you to have the miracle!

An alchemist is a spiritual chemist, a master of transmutation. The great feat of an alchemist is

that they can do the impossible: They can turn lead into gold. This concept erupted in my

mind–the ability to take anything that life gives you and turn it into gold.

Quincy Jones is an alchemist, and he had set my mind on fire; I had never met anybody like

him. I wanted to be an alchemist, too. I wanted to be able to transform anything and everything that life gave me into gold.”

–Will Smith, Will  

XXVIII

“Everyone has an invisible sign hanging from their neck saying, ‘Make me feel important.”

-Mary Kay Ash

XXIX

“After all these years and experiences, I know nothing, nothing at all, that compares to the love for another person when it comes to reaching immensity and infinity.”

– Brunello Cucinelli 

XXX

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

XXXI

“Simple kindness to one’s self and all that lives is the most powerful transformational force of all. It produces no backlash, has no downside, and never leads to loss or despair. It increases one’s own true power without exacting any toll. But to reach maximum power such kindness can permit no exceptions, nor can it be practiced with the expectation of some selfish gain or reward. And its effect is as far-reaching as it is subtle.”

– David Hawkins, Power vs Force

XXXII

“If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility!”

-Soren Kierkegaard

XXXIII

“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

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