"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."

"Siddhartha" by Hermann Hesse

Free Kindle edition here.

•  "Your soul is the whole world"
•  "And so I'm starting to believe that this knowledge has no worser enemy than the desire to know it, than learning."
•  "It is not my place to judge another person's life. Only for myself, for myself alone, I must decide, I must chose, I must refuse."
•  "I want to learn from myself, want to be my student, want to get to know myself . . ."
•  "love can be obtained by begging, buying, receiving it as a gift, finding it in the street, but it cannot be stolen"

"Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley

Kindle edition here.

• "I felt my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven, for nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose - a point from on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye."
• "But I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy, and the absence of the object of which I now feel as a most severe evil. I have no friend . . .when I am glowing with enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate my joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection. I shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true; but that is a poor medium for the communication of feelings . . . I have no one near me, gentle yet courageous, possessed of a cultivated as well as of a capacious mind, whose tastes are like my own, to approve or amend my plans."
• "He is so gentle, yet so wise; his mind is so cultivated, and when he speaks, although his words are culled with the choicest art, yet they flow with rapidly and unparalleled eloquence."

"Sidelights on Relativity" by Albert Einstein

Kindle edition here.

• "One reason why mathematics enjoys special esteem, above all other sciences, is that its laws are absolutely certain and indisputable, while those of all other sciences are to some extent debatable and in constant danger of being overthrown by newly discovered facts."

• "Newton's theory is probably the greatest stride ever made in the effort towards the causal nexus of natural phenomena."

• "And yet this theory evoked a lively sense of discomfort among Newton's contemporaries, because it seemed to be in conflict with the principle springing from the rest of experience, that there can be reciprocal action only through contact, and not through immediate action at a distance."

"My Heart Remembers" by Kim Vogel Sawyer

Kindle edition here.

• "bits and snatches from the past hours cluttered Maelle's  mind in a confusing mosaic"
• " cry the hurt  away"
• "Maelle awakened Christmas morning with a dream hovering on the fringes of her mind."
• "Traveling alone often brought waves of melancholy, but on this particular morning she felt far from dismal. Who could be gloomy on such a glorious day? Overhead, fluffy clouds floated  lazily in a brilliant blue sky. The early spring rain had ignited  an abundance of fresh scents as well as brought a touch of green  to the landscape. If she squinted she could make out tiny buds  on the tips of bare trees. It wouldn't be long before wild flowers  would be making an appearance."
• "How many photographs had she  taken of children hiding their sad, hopeless situation behind  a forced smile?"

"Reflections on War and Death" by Sigmund Freud

Kindle edition here.

• "Caught in the whirlwind of these war times"
• "It would seem as though no event had ever destroyed so much of the precious heritage of mankind, confused so many of the clearest intellects or so thoroughly debased what is highest."
• "Even science has lost her dispassionate impartiality. Her deeply embittered votaries are intent upon seizing her weapons to do their share in the battle against the enemy."
• "The anthropologist has to declare his opponent inferior and degenerate, the psychiatrist must diagnose him as mentally deranged."
• "One need not be a sentimentalist, one may realize the biological and physiological necessity of suffering in the economy of human life, and yet one may condemn the methods and the aims of war and long for its termination."

"The Man Who Knew Too Much" by G. K. Chesterton

Free Kindle edition here and free e-book here.

• "he was still young enough to remember his politics and not merely try to forget them"
• "Harold March was the sort of man who knows everything about politics, and nothing about politicians. He also knew a great deal about art, letters, philosophy, and general culture; about almost everything, indeed, except the world he was living in."
• ". . . the premonitions proper to a man who meets the strangest friendship of his life"
• "The man was apparently fishing; or at least was fixed in a fisherman's attitude with more than a fisherman's immobility. March was able to examine the man almost as if he had been a statue for some minutes before the statue spoke."
• "It was one of those cases of a strange face so unmistakable as to feel familiar. We feel, somehow, that we ought to recognize it, even though we do not."
• "I know too much," he said. "That's what's the matter with me. That's what's the matter with all of us, and the whole show; we know too much."

Books I Want to Read in 2012

• The Man Who Knew Too Much by G. K. Chesterton 
• Love's Executioner by Irvin Yalom
• Galatea 2.2 by Richard Powers
• A Young Girl's Diary by Sigmund Freud
• Sidelights on Relativity by Albert Einstein
• Reflections on War and Death by Sigmund Freud
• Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
• Pragmatism by William James
• The Addicted Brain: Why We Abuse Drugs by Michael Kuhar
• Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich W. Nietzsche
• Leonardo da Vinci by Sigmund Freud
• Intentions by Oscar Wilde
• All my textbooks and books for classes, of course ;)

"The Tao of Pooh" by Benjamin Hoff

Paperback edition here.

• "Life itself, when understood and utilized for what it is, is sweet."
• ". . . but, no matter how he may seem to others, especially to those fooled by appearances, Pooh, the Uncarved Block, is able to accomplish what he does because he is simpleminded. As any old Taoist walking out of the woods can tell you, simpleminded does not necessarily mean stupid. It's rather significant that the Taoist ideal is that of the still, calm, reflecting 'mirror-mind' of the Uncarved Block, and it's rather significant that Pooh, rather than the thinkers Rabbit, Owl, or Eeyore, is the true hero of Winnie-the-Pooh."

"Rabbit's clever," said Pooh thoughtfully."

"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit's clever."

"And he has Brain."

"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit has Brain."

There was a long silence.

"I suppose," said Pooh, "that that's why he never understands anything."

"The Way of Peace" by James Allen

Kindle edition here.

• "Meditation is the intense dwelling, in thought, upon an idea or theme, with the object of thoroughly comprehending it, and whatsoever you constantly meditate upon you will not only come to understand, but will grow more and more into its likeness, for it will become incorporated into your very being, will become, in fact, your very self. If, therefore, you constantly dwell upon that which is selfish and debasing, you will ultimately become selfish and debased; if you ceaselessly think upon that which is pure and unselfish you will surely become pure and unselfish."
• "There is an unavoidable tendency to become literally the embodiment of that quality upon which one most constantly thinks."
• "He who would secure any worldly advantage must be willing to work vigorously for it, and he would be foolish indeed who, waiting with folded hands, expected it to come to him for the mere asking."
• "Do not then vainly imagine that you can obtain the heavenly possessions without making an effort."

"The Misfit" by Steven Poser

Kindle edition here.

• "You can imagine how difficult it is treating a Hollywood actress, who has so many serious problems and is completely alone in the world, and yet at the same time is extremely famous." 

• "She was so childlike she could do anything, and you would forgive as you would forgive a seven-year old. She was both a woman and a baby, and both men and women adored her." 

"Emma" by Jane Austen

Kindle edition here.

• "a valetudinarian all his life, without activity of mind or body, he was a much older man in ways than in years; and though everywhere beloved for the friendliness of his heart and his amiable temper, his talents could not have recommended him at any time"
• "It was a melancholy change; and Emma could not but sigh over it, and wish for impossible things"
• "from his habits of gentle selfishness, and of being never able to suppose that other people could feel differently from himself"
• "a fanciful, troublesome creature!"
• ""And have you never known the pleasure and triumph of a lucky guess?— I pity you.—I thought you cleverer—for, depend upon it a lucky guess is never merely luck. There is always some talent in it."
• "He had never been an unhappy man; his own temper had secured him from that"
• "a great deal better to choose than to be chosen, to excite gratitude than to feel it"

"Common Sense" by Thomas Payne

Kindle edition here.

• "Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them"
• "Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher."
• "Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one"
• "I draw my idea of the form of government from a principle in nature, which no art can overturn, viz. that the more simple any thing is, the less liable it is to be disordered, and the easier repaired when disordered"
• "There is something exceedingly ridiculous in the composition of monarchy; it first excludes a man from the means of information, yet empowers him to act in cases where the highest judgment is required. The state of a king shuts him from the world, yet the business of a king requires him to know it thoroughly"

"The Soul of Man Under Socialism" by Oscar Wilde

Kindle edition here.

• "The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence"
• "Most personalities have been obliged to be rebels.  Half their strength has been wasted in friction."
• "The note of the perfect personality is not rebellion, but peace."
• "it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought"
• "their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it.  Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease."