Thomas Fiffer shares the words of wisdom he keeps on his wall.
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In high school, when I joined the debate team, I learned the practice of writing (or clipping and pasting with mucilage) quotes on notecards to support my arguments. This activity quickly carried over to my reading, and I began copying my favorite quotes from playwrights, novelists, and philosophers onto cards so I could pull them out and refer to them when I needed perspective, inspiration, solace, or a swift kick in the ass.
Below are the quotes (including some of my own) that line my office wall today to help me focus and stay true to my self and my mission. Please share yours in the comments.
When you are grieved about anything external it is not the thing itself which afflicts you, but your judgment about it. This judgment it is in your power to efface. —Marcus Aurelius
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Do not attend to the common talk of the mob, nor place your hope in human rewards for your deeds; it is proper that virtue itself, by her own charms, draw you on to true glory. Let others talk about you as they choose, for they will talk in any case. —Cicero
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Thine own reproach alone do fear. —Burns
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To perform the duties of this life well, troubling not about another, is the prime wisdom. —Confucius
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Happiness is being able to tell the truth without hurting anyone. —Fellini
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Perfection and happiness are not the same thing. —Thomas G. Fiffer
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Being nice costs nothing. —Thomas G. Fiffer
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A novelist is “one on whom nothing is lost.” —Henry James
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There are two plots in all of literature. You go on a journey, or a stranger comes to town. —John Gardner
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Nothing rings as true as silence. —The English Beat
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The truth is that every man’s soul has implanted within it the desire to love, and it is as much its nature to love as it is to feel, to understand, and to remember. —Plutarch
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Knowledge won through suffering. Drop, drop, in our sleep, upon our hearts, sorrow falls, memory’s pain, and to us, though against our very will, even in our own despite, comes wisdom, by the awful grace of God. —Aeschylus
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Love, then, is not expended like money, for in2 addition to the fact that money is diminished by expenditure and love is increased, they differ in this too, that we give greater evidence of good-will towards anyone if we do not seek the return of money we have given him; whereas no one can sincerely expend love unless he tenderly insist on being repaid; for when money is received, it is so much gain to the recipient but so much loss to the donor; love, on the other hand, is not only augmented in the man who demands it back from the person he loves, even when he does not receive it, but the person who returns it actually begins to possess it only when he pays it back. —St. Augustine
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When you suspend your faculty of independent judgment, you suspend consciousness. To stop consciousness is to stop life. —Ayn Rand
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Thomas G. Fiffer’s books, Why It Can’t Work and What Is Love? are available on Amazon.
Photo courtesy of author