"This is what you find when you study the true masters of any profession. They don’t care much about winning, about money, about fame, about most of the things that have come their way as a result of their success. Their journey has always been toward something bigger. They aren’t running a race against the competition. They are in a battle with themselves."
-- Ryan Holiday
"You must pay your debts, own your mistakes, communicate your intentions. You must have a plan for what you’re going to do after. Whether that’s a next project, a new chapter, another charge. Retreats, we must remember, are only temporary. They are buying us time until we can take the offensive and courageously attack again in pursuit of our victory."
-- Ryan Holiday
"What does matter is that you gave everything, because anything less is to cheat the gift.
The gift of your potential.
The gift of the opportunity.
The gift of the craft you’ve been introduced to.
The gift of the responsibility entrusted to you.
The gift of the instruction and time of others.
The gift of life itself."
-- Ryan Holiday
"The pursuit of discipline means being disciplined in all things, especially little things. And time—how we spend it, its tiny increments—is something small that actually amounts to something very large."
-- Ryan Holiday
"You’re in the game, always. You’ve got to know the time precisely because you will never know when it’s going to run out on you. That’s what the reminder memento mori means. No one can take time or life for granted . . . as it runs out for all of us."
-- Ryan Holiday
"It’s the journey of a lifetime. In fact, that’s the way to think about all of this: How much progress could you make if you made just a little each day over the course of an entire life? What might this journey look like, where might it lead, if each bit of progress you made presented both the opportunity and the obligation to make a little more progress, and you seized those opportunities, you lived up to those obligations, each and every time?"
-- Ryan Holiday
"“Anyone who has not groomed his life in general towards some definite end cannot possibly arrange his individual actions properly,” the writer Michel de Montaigne reminded himself. If you don’t know where you’re sailing, the Stoics said, no wind is favorable. This means first, the discipline to step away and think: What am I doing? What are my priorities? What is the most important contribution I make—to my work, to my family, to the world? Then comes the discipline to ignore just about everything else."
-- Ryan Holiday
"The most surefire way to make yourself more fragile, to cut your career short, is to be undisciplined about rest and recovery, to push yourself too hard, too fast, to overtrain and to pursue the false economy of overwork. Manage the load."
-- Ryan Holiday
"“A thousand days of training to develop,” Musashi would write, “ten thousand days of training to polish.” For a samurai, there was no such thing as pretty good. If a pretty good swordsman met a better fighter . . . he would die. It’s like the basketball Hall of Famer Bill Bradley’s observation: When you are not practicing, refining, working—somewhere, someone else is . . . and when you meet them, they will beat you."
-- Ryan Holiday
"A person who lives below their means has far more latitude than a person who can’t. That’s why Michelangelo, the artist, didn’t live as austerely as Cato but he avoided the gifts dangled by his wealthy patrons. He didn’t want to owe anyone. Real wealth, he understood, was autonomy."
-- Ryan Holiday
"The pleasure of excess is always fleeting. Which is why self-discipline is not a rejection of pleasure but a way to embrace it. Treating our body well, moderating our desires, working hard, exercising, hustling—this is not a punishment. This is simply the work for which pleasure is the reward."
-- Ryan Holiday
"Think of how lucky you are. Be glad to be awake (because it’s better than the alternative, which we’ll all greet one day). Feel the joy of being able to do what you love. Cherish the time. But most of all, use it."
-- Ryan Holiday
"You have to do your best while you still have a chance. Life is short. You never know when the game, when your body, will be taken away from you. Don’t waste it!"
-- Ryan Holiday
