30 Must Read Quotes From Icons Of History Required To Turn Your Adversity Into Advantage

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We mistakenly believe the icons we celebrate from history were exceptionally talented or gifted. Instead, their success came from timeless philosophical principles which allowed them to overcome tremendous adversity as well as everyday problems. Here now is their timeless wisdom distilled into thirty quotes from the The Obstacle Is The Way by Ryan Holiday.

Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been.

—MARCUS AURELIUS


What such a man needs is not courage but nerve control, cool headedness. This he can get only by practice.

—THEODORE ROOSEVELT


Would you have a great empire? Rule over yourself.

—PUBLIUS SYRUS


Don’t let the force of an impression when it first hit you knock you off your feet; just say to it: Hold on a moment; let me see who you are and what you represent. Let me put you to the test.

—EPICTETUS


Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.

—VIKTOR FRANKL


In life our first job is this, to divide and distinguish things into two categories: externals I cannot control, but the choices I make with regard to them I do control. Where will I find good and bad? In me, in my choices.

—EPICTETUS


The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close up.

—CHUCK PALAHNIUK


Genius is the ability to put into effect what is in your mind. There’s no other definition of it.

—F. SCOTT FITZGERALD


A good person dyes events with his own color . . . and turns whatever happens to his own benefit.

—SENECA


Then imitate the action of the tiger; stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood.

—SHAKESPEARE


We must all either wear out or rust out, every one of us. My choice is to wear out.

—THEODORE ROOSEVELT


He says the best way out is always through And I agree to that, or in so far

As I can see no way out but through.

—ROBERT FROST


What is defeat? Nothing but education; nothing but the first steps to something better.

—WENDELL PHILLIPS


Under the comb

the tangle and the straight path are the same.

—HERACLITUS


Whatever is rightly done, however humble, is noble. (Quidvis recte factum quamvis humile praeclarum.)

—SIR HENRY ROYCE


The cucumber is bitter? Then throw it out.

There are brambles in the path? Then go around. That’s all you need to know.

—MARCUS AURELIUS


Whoever cannot seek

the unforeseen sees nothing, for the known way

is an impasse.

—HERACLITUS


Wise men are able to make a fitting use even of their enmities.

—PLUTARCH


When jarred, unavoidably, by circumstance revert at once

to yourself and don’t lose the rhythm more than you can help. You’ll have a better grasp of harmony if you keep going

back to it.

—MARCUS AURELIUS


The best men are not those who have waited for chances but who have taken them; besieged chance, conquered the chance, and made chance the servitor.

—E. H. CHAPIN


In the meantime, cling tooth and nail to the following rule: not to give in to adversity, not to trust prosperity, and always take full note of fortune’s habit of behaving just

as she pleases.

—MARCUS AURELIUS


If thy faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small.

—PROVERBS 24:10


Offer a guarantee and disaster threatens.

—ANCIENT INSCRIPTION AT THE ORACLE OF DELPHI


The Fates guide the person who accepts them and hinder the person who resists them.—CLEANTHES

My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward,

not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it…but love it.

—NIETZSCHE


“Gentleman, I am hardening on this enterprise. I repeat, I am now hardening towards this enterprise.”

—WINSTON CHURCHILL


A man’s job is to make the world a better to place to live in, so far as he is able—always remembering the results will be infinitesimal—and to attend to his own soul.

—LEROY PERCY


When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

—DR. JOHNSON


Live on in your blessings, your destiny’s been won. But ours calls us on from one ordeal to the next.

—VIRGIL


To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school…it is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.

—HENRY DAVID THOREAU 


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