Sourced and curated.

She was seventy-five and she was going to make some changes in her life.

Jonathan Franzen

The Corrections · 2001

★ 6.2

Personal journal · Philosophical literature

Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.

Marcus Aurelius

Meditations · 180

★ 5.6

I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise, they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a. M. Of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.

Joan Didion

On Keeping a Notebook · 1968

★ 5.3

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

Elizabeth Appell

1979

★ 5.2

Scientific literature · Psychological literature

Growth was seen as an endless series of daily choices and decisions in each of which one can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.

Abraham Maslow

The Psychology of Science · 1966

★ 5.1

There can be no progress (real, that is, moral) except in the individual and by the individual himself.

Charles Baudelaire

1867

★ 4.5

Psychological literature

Fortunately analysis is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts. Life itself still remains a very effective therapist.

Karen Horney

Our Inner Conflicts · 1945

★ 4.4

Is Goodness indeed so far away? If we really wanted Goodness, we should find that it was at our very side.

Confucius

Analects · 221 BC

★ 4.0

Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do the virtues arise in us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit.

Aristotle

The Nicomachean Ethics · 322 BC

★ 3.9

The good of man is the active exercise of his soul's faculties in conformity with excellence or virtue... Moreover this activity must occupy a complete lifetime; for one swallow does not make spring, nor does one fine day; and similarly one day or a brief period of happiness does not make a man supremely blessed and happy.

Aristotle

The Nicomachean Ethics · 322 BC

★ 3.9

Play · Comedy (play)

They say best men are molded out of faults, And, for the most, become much more the better For being a little bad.

William Shakespeare

Measure for Measure · 1616

★ 3.9

Poem · Religious literature · Epic poem

The childhood shows the man, As morning shows the day.

John Milton

Paradise Regained · 1671

★ 3.9

Virtue shuns ease as a companion... It demands a rough and thorny path.

Michel de Montaigne

Essays · 1580

★ 3.8

Almanac

How few there are who have courage enough to own their Faults, or resolution enough to mend them!

Benjamin Franklin

1743

★ 3.8

Never complain of that of which it is at all times in your power to rid yourself.

Adam Smith

The Theory of Moral Sentiments · 1759

★ 3.8

Play

Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.

Oscar Wilde

A Woman of No Importance · 1893

★ 3.8

The best way to lift one's self up is to help someone else.

Booker T. Washington

1900

★ 3.8

Poem

The Child is father of the Man.

William Wordsworth

1802

★ 3.7

All experience is an arch, to build upon.

Henry Adams

The Education of Henry Adams · 1907

★ 3.7

It is through weakness and vulnerability that most of us learn empathy and compassion and discover our soul.

Desmond Tutu

2004

★ 3.7

Film · Biography (film) · Adventure (film) · Biography · Adventure

Wandering around our America has changed me more than I thought. I am not me anymore, at least, I'm not the same me I was.

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna

The Motorcycle Diaries · 2004

★ 3.7

Scripture · Religious literature

If a man should conquer in battle a thousand and a thousand more, and another man should conquer himself, his would be the greater victory, because the greatest of victories is the victory over oneself.

Pali Tipitaka

100 BC

★ 3.6

Prosperity doth best discover Vice; But Adversity doth best discover Vertue.

Francis Bacon

1625

★ 3.6

Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

1831

★ 3.6

Travel writing

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.

Robert Louis Stevenson

1882

★ 3.6

Film · Comedy (film) · Western (film) · Comedy · Western

In a way, all of us has an El Guapo to face someday. For some, shyness might be their El Guapo. For others, a lack of education might be their El Guapo. For us, El Guapo is a big, dangerous guy who wants to kill us. But as sure as my name is Lucky Day, the people of Santa Poco can conquer their own personal El Guapo, who also happens to be the actual El Guapo!

Lucky Day

Three Amigos! · 1986

★ 3.6

Of all means to regeneration Remorse is surely the most wasteful. It cuts away healthy tissues with the poisoned. It is a knife that probes far deeper than the evil.

E.M. Forster

Howards End · 1910

★ 3.5

Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in the hope of finding the one which suits them-the one, in fact, which is not a mask.

W.H. Auden

1973

★ 3.5

If what matters in a person's existence is to accept the inevitable consciously, to taste the good and bad to the full and to make for oneself a more individual, unaccidental and inward destiny alongside one's external fate, then my life has been neither empty nor worthless.

Hermann Hesse

Gertrude · 1910

★ 3.5

It is never too late to give up our prejudices.

Henry David Thoreau

Walden · 1854

★ 2.3

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.

Henry David Thoreau

Walden · 1854

★ 2.2

Let no one think that he can conquer the first impressions of his youth.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

1796

★ 2.1

Novel · Modernist literature

Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.

Marcel Proust

In Search of Lost Time · 1922

★ 2.1

Film · Comedy (film) · Comedy

Is this a breakthrough, that I'm a sailor? I sail? I sail now?

Bob Wiley

What About Bob? · 1991

★ 2.1

Film · Crime (film) · Thriller (film) · Crime · Thriller

No matter how much you change, you still have to pay the price for the things you've done.

Doug MacRay

The Town · 2010

★ 2.1

People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Essays: First Series (Emerson) · 1841

★ 2.0

Whatever you are, try to be a good one.

William Makepeace Thackeray

1897

★ 2.0