“Don’t underestimate the psychological value of that feeling of direct connection with the author as a compensation for what might seem like worldly sacrifice required by heresy.”

Nothing comes from nothing. No brain is an island.

Integrity is meaningless when your highest good lies in your immediate advantage of the moment. Integrity can’t be sustained in a person who privileges their feelings over factual reality.

Scientists are finding that certain discomforts protect us from physical and psychological problems like obesity, heart disease, cancers, diabetes, depression, and anxiety, and even more fundamental issues like feeling a lack of meaning and purpose.

Anxiety works by anticipating and inhibiting. It says: Don’t do that, you’ll get hurt. Don’t do that, you’ll be disappointed. Don’t do that, you’ll embarrass yourself. Anxiety likes routine. It likes predictability. It likes knowing outcomes.

There is no one predator from which to escape; there are many. We are in the business of running now. It is all so urgent. Every year, it seems we must run harder. There is no other solution. We can only run, and panic, and chatter out our fears to others, who will mirror them back to us.

Imagine if our negative feelings, or at least lots of them, turned out to be illusions, and we could dispel them by just contemplating them from a particular vantage point.

Perhaps my biggest takeaway was that modern medicine does not really have a handle on when and how to treat the chronic diseases of aging that will likely kill most of us.

The cult of the self prioritizes the needs of the individual while disregarding the needs of others.

There was no way I was waking up every morning to face myself.

No dark fate determines the future. We do. Each day and each moment, we are able to create and re-create our lives and the very quality of human life on our planet. This is the power we wield.

Talk less, get more. This book is about learning how to engage with the world in ways that give us an advantage.

The commonsense rules of the “real world” are a fragile collection of socially reinforced illusions.

“Nothing,” he wrote, “vexes the mind so much as feeling one’s self injured in a way that cannot be prevented or avenged.”

Margaret Willson compiled a fascinating retelling of Captain Thuridur’s life in Woman, Captain, Rebel. Thuridur defied many conventions of the time for how women were to act, what they were to wear, and how they are viewed within the Icelandic society.

And when we make mistakes—when we fail to lead—our identity; our sense of self; our self-esteem; our deeply held beliefs about what it will take to feel loved and safe and that we belong, as well as that most the basic ability to provide for ourselves and our loved ones, seems to implode.

Oaks support more forms of life and more fascinating interactions than any other tree genus in North America.

Being different conditions you toward cautiousness, even as it demands that you be bold.

Discipline isn’t just endurance and strength. It’s also finding the best, most economical way of doing something. It’s the commitment to evolving and improving so that the tasks get more efficient as you go.

“Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is a result of good work habits. That’s it in a nutshell.” - Twyla Tharp