Quotes/aphorisms that have actually helped you in life

[D.L.M.]

"you can learn somthing from everyone, wether its what to do, or what not to do" my brother.
"keep a cool booty" my friend dan who can never say out of prison, even though he comes from a nice middle class family.
"Im gonna tell it to ya like this, 20 in the front, 40 in the back" my brother, hustle and flow
"take out everything you got, and do it in da butt"-the ladies man,

daladiesman

[Shenlong]

[ QUOTE ]
"you can learn somthing from everyone, wether its what to do, or what not to do" my brother.
"keep a cool booty" my friend dan who can never say out of prison, even though he comes from a nice middle class family.
"Im gonna tell it to ya like this, 20 in the front, 40 in the back" my brother, hustle and flow
"take out everything you got, and do it in da butt"-the ladies man,

daladiesman

[/ QUOTE ]

I feel like everyone of these, with the exception of the first, is somehow slowly killing this otherwise awesome thread.

Edited to take out my quote, which had already been used. I'll find something new to put here.

[ScottieK]

"Success and failure are the same false friends." This is something like T.S. Eliot's "Going up and going down are one and the same." What it means to me is not to be too hard on myself when things aren't going my way, and not to be too proud or euphoric when things are going my way. As a result, I'm a pretty even-tempered guy.

"Just because you pour syrup on s#$% don't make it pancakes." - Samuel L. Jackson, in the movie Juice. This reminds me that a quick fix usually doesn't solve a serious problem or improve anything at all. Kinda related to the computer programming adage "Garbage in, garbage out."

"Brevity is the soul of wit." - Polonius, Hamlet. This reminds me to be as concise as I can when speaking or writing. Also, there are few things I appreciate more day to day than a sharp, witty remark, from me or someone else. Short, snappy remarks are the best ones. In other words, don't be a windbag like Polonius.

ScottieK

[mntbikr15]

[censored] it, heres the whole article.
Edit- Read it, well worth it


"Twitching with Twight"
Mark Twight

Whats your problem? I think I know. You see it in the mirror every morning. Temptation and doubt hip hop inside your head. You know its not supposed to be like this. But you drank the Kool-Aid and dressed yourself up in someone else's life.
You're haunted because you remember having something more. With each drag of the razor you ask yourself why you piss your blood into another man's cup. Working at the job he offered, your future is between his thumb and forefinger. And the necessary accessories, the proclamations of success you thought gave you stability provide your boss security. Your debt encourages acquiescence, the heavy mortgage makes you polite.
Aren't you sick of being tempted by an alternative lifestyle, but bound by chains of your own choosing? Of the gnawing doubt that the college graduate, path of least resistance is the right way for you--Forever? Each weekend you prepare for the two weeks each summer when you wake up each day and really ride, or climb; the only imperative being to go to bed tired. When booming thermals shoot you full of juice and your Vario shrieks 7m/sec, you wonder if the lines will pop. The risk pares away life's trivia. Up there, sucking down the thin cumulus, the earth looks small, the boss even smaller, and you wish it could go on forever. But a wish is all it will ever be.
Because the ground is hard, Monday morning is harsh. You wear the hangover of your weekend rush under a strict and proper suit and tie. You listen to NPR because it's inoffensive, PFC: Politically [censored] Correct. Where's the counter-cultural righteousness that had you flirting with Bad Religion and the vintage Pistols tape over the weekend? On Monday you eat frozen food and live the homogenized city experience. But Sunday you thought about cutting your hair very short. You wanted a little more volume and wondered how out of place you looked in the Sub Pop Music Store. Flipping through the import section, you didn't recognize any of the bands. KMFDM? It stands for Kill Mother [censored] Depeche Mode. Didn't you know? How could you not?
Tuesday you look at the face in the mirror again. It stares back, accusing. How can you get by on that one weekly dose? How can you be satisfied with the artifice of these experiences? Why should your words mean anything? They aren't learned by heart and written in blood. If you can not grasp the consciousness-altering experience that real mastery of these disciplines proposes, of what value is your participation? The truth is pointless when it is shallow. Do you have the courage to live with the intergrity that stabs deep?
Use the murror to cut to the heart of things and uncover your true self. Use the razor to cut away what you don't need. The life you want to live has no recipe. Following the recipe is what got you here in the first place.
Mix one high school diploma with and undergrad degree and a college sweetheart. With a whisk (or a whip) blend two cars, a poorly built house in a cul de sac, and 50 hours a week working for a board that doesnt give a [censored] about you. Reproduce once. Then again. Place all ingredients in a rut, or a grace. One is a bit longer then the other. Bake thoroughly until the resulting life is set. Rigid. With no way out. Serve cold and enjoy.
But there IS a way out. Live the lifestyle instead of paying lip service to the lifestyle. Live with commitment. With emotional content. Live whatever life you choose honestly. Give up this renaissance man, dilettante [censored] of doing a lot of different things(and none of them very well by real standards). Get to the guts of one thing; accept, without casuistry, the reponsibility of making a choice. When you live honestly, you can not separate your mind from your body, or your thoughts from your actions.

"If you really want to hurt them and their children not yet born tell them the truth always"
-Henry Rollins, See a Grown Man Cry, 1992

Tell the truth, First to yourself. Say it until it hurts. Learn the reality of your own selfishness. Quit living for other people at the expense of your own self, you're not really alive. You live in the land of denial--and they say the view is pretty as long as you remain asleep.
Well its time to WAKE THE [censored] UP!
So do it. Wake up. When you drink the coffee tomorrow, take it black and notice it. Feel the caffeine surge through you. Dont take it for granted. Use it for something. Burn the Grisham books. Sell the bad CDs. Mariah Carey, Dave Mathews, and N'Sync aren't part of the soundtrack where you're going.
Cut your hair. Dont worry about the gray. If you're good at what you do, no one cares what you look like. Go to the weight room. Learn the difference between actually working out and what you've been doing. Live for the iron and the fresh air. Punish your body to perfect your soul. Kick the habit of being nice to everyone you meet. Do they deserve it? Say "no" more often.
Quit posturing at the weekly parties. Your high pulse rate, your 5.12s and quick time on the Slickrock Trail dont mean [censored] to anybody else. These numbers are the measuring sticks of your own progress; show, dont tell. Don't react to the itch with a scratch. Instead, learn it. Honor the necessity of both the itch and the scratch.
But a haircut and a new soundtrack do not a modern man make. As long as you have a safety net you act without commitment. You'll go back to your old habits once you meet a little resistance. You need the samurai's desperateness and his insanity.
Burn the bridge. Nuke the foundation. Back yourself up against a wall. Have an opinion one way or the other, get off the fence and rip it up. Cut yourself off so there is no going back. Once you're committed the truth will come out.
You ask about security? What you need is uncertainty. What you need is confusion. Something which forces you to reinvent yourself, a whip to drive you harder.

"I never try anything--I just do it. Want to try me?"
-White Zombie

In Dune, Frank Herber called it "the attitude of the knife", cut off whats incomplete and say "now it has finished, for it has ended there".
To carve out your place in the world of Gravity, you must make a commitment. All you have to be is good at your chosen discipline. Its a Meritocracy out there, with gravity as the auditor. Inconsistency, incompetence, and lies are all cut short by the ground. It will stop you if you cant stop yourself.

[troymclur]

"Ars longa, vita brevis"

The literal translation is: "Art is long, life is short". But my poetry professor, when first introducing us to the phrase, translated it as: "Art lives, life doesn't"

This is why i write, and photograph and videotape anything and everything i can. Art is a tomb of civilization, and we can live through it to speak past death. At its greatest, art is our legacy when we have none. Oddly enough, the full text translation and supposed meaning is quite a bit different than how my professor gave it to us, but i like his version much better.

[Aloysius]

This one might seem kind of trite or whatever, but for some reason had an impact on my thinking.

Was at Christmas party of a prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firm while back. For fun, they came up with a "Top 10 [insert name of firm] Rules for Investing in Early-Stage Private Companies". Most of them were jokey, but one stood out to me:

"If the decision is very, very difficult to make, there is no right decision so just flip a coin."

-Al

[debater]

"Great Spirits have always
encountered violent opposition
from mediocre minds"

Einstein

Debater

[HitHard69]

I coach High School football, and I use these atleast 10+ times each season...

"I firmly believe that any man's finest hour, his greatest fulfillment of all he holds dear, is the moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle...victorious." -Lombardi

"It's amazing what can be accomplished when no one cares who get's the credit." -Unknown

One from a former coach of mine

"You have the greatest power on earth, the power to choose."

And another from a former coach who was dying of cancer

"Toughness is not how strong you are, it's what you can endure."

[Brainwalter]

[ QUOTE ]

"If the decision is very, very difficult to make, there is no right decision so just flip a coin."

[/ QUOTE ]

Sklansky said basically the same thing.

[natedogg]

[ QUOTE ]
Do not confuse eloquence or wittiness with wisdom. Therein lies the problem with quotations.

[/ QUOTE ]

They are only as good as what you get out of them. If there's a phrase or saying that means something to you, that you find relevant, then who cares if the source was a moron or a fool?

My OP contained a quote that many people found meaningless to them. So what. To me it is profound and when it comes to my mind at the right times, it helps me focus on the message that I took from it.

But why am I even telling you this? After all you can't fight the sea with a sword.

natedogg