"Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl

Kindle edition here.

• "it is not the physical pain which hurts the most . . . it is the mental agony caused by the injustice, the unreasonableness of it all"

 More quotes below . . .

"The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen R. Covey

Kindle Edition here.

• "If we wanted to change the situation, we first had to change ourselves. . . And to change ourselves effectively, we first had to change our perceptions."

• "Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside."

• "what we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do"

• "until a person can say deeply and honestly, “I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday,” that person cannot say, “I choose otherwise.”

• "The way we see the problem is the problem."

• "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

"The Power of Concentration" by Theron Q. Dumont

Free Kindle edition here.

• "Concentration makes the will and intellect act in unison."

• "Most people are imitators and copiers of their past selves."

• "It is just as easy to be courageous as cowardly. Courage concentrates the mental forces on the task at hand."

• "No one knows what they can do until they try."

"Swan Song" by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Free Kindle edition here.

• "She was beautiful, graceful as a poplar, young, innocent, pure, and radiant as a summer dawn. Her smile could charm away the darkest night."

• "I was acting that day, I remember--I had a foolish, clown's part, and as I acted, I felt my eyes being opened; I saw that the worship of the art I had held so sacred was a delusion and an empty dream; that I was a slave, a fool, the plaything of the idleness of strangers."

Personal: Jim Morrison

• "There are things known and things unknown and in between are the doors."
• "I like any reaction I can get with my music. Just anything to get people to think. I mean if you can get a whole room full of drunk, stoned people to actually wake up and think, you're doing something."
• “People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.”
• “It may have been in pieces, but I gave you the best of me.”
• “I think the highest and lowest points are the important ones. Anything else is just...in between.”
• "If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it's to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel."

Francesca Woodman: Personal Journal

Entries from the personal journal of the young talented artist - photographer - Francesca Woodman.

• “Am I in the picture? Am I getting in or out of it? I could be a ghost, an animal or a dead body, not just this girl standing on the corner…?”

• “I was inventing a Language for people to see…” (last journal entry. January 19, 1981)

• “Then at one point I did not need to translate the notes; they went directly to my hands” (1976)

• “Real things don’t frighten me just the ones in my mind do.”

  
  

"Thoughts on Art and Life" by Leonardo da Vinci

The notes of Leonardo da Vinci introduced and edited by Lewis Einstein and Maurice Baring.
Free Kindle edition here.

•  "let not thy rage or malice destroy so great a thing as life, for he who does not value it does not deserve it"
• "That which can be lost cannot be deemed riches. Virtue is our true wealth and the true reward of its possessor; it cannot be lost, it never deserts us until life leaves us. Hold property and external riches with fear; they often leave their possessor scorned and mocked at for having lost them."
• "the age which flies glides by in stealth and deceives others; and nothing is more swift than the years, and he who sows virtue reaps glory."
• "A long life is a life well spent."