Links to each quote source, or the source I am quoting it via, will open in a new browser tab. If you want even more quotes, check out my archive of monthly quote curations.

Photo: Sunrise at Blackrock Summit, VA, USA, October 2013 by Brett Anderson
Quote Text: “To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble.” – Bill Watterson, Kenyon College Commencement, 20 May 1990

Photo: Crystal Lake, San Juan Mountains, CO, USA, September 2009 by Sandy Horvath-Dori
Quote Text: “I felt more at home in these mountains than I had anywhere in my life, and I didn’t want to leave.” – Jennifer Hanson, Hiking the Continental Divide

Photo: Wild Goose Island, Glacier National Park, MT, USA, July 2011 by Loco Steve
Quote Text: “Perhaps we all need time to be free, time alone in nature, supported and encouraged to discover our own wild selves, to reconnect with who we are and what we want from life.” – Jennifer Hanson, Hiking the Continental Divide

Six Inspiring Quotes:

Photo: Allegheny Trail Footbridge over Anthony Creek, WV, USA, September 2013 by Brett Anderson
Quote Text: “We see that everything in Nature called destruction must be creation, – a change from beauty to beauty.” – John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra
Quote Source: My First Summer in the Sierra by John Muir, Date: 21 August 1869

Photo: Mt. Hood, OR, USA, September 2012 by Brett Anderson
Quote Text: “You don’t lead by telling others what to do. You lead by dominating your own pain, working harder than everyone else and setting an example so high that others are inspired to follow.” – Sam Davies
Quoted Source: SamuelDavies.net, What is Leadership Really?

Photo: Virginia Bluebells in Bloom, VA, USA, March 2013 by Brett Anderson
Quote Text: “‘Kindness’ covers all of my political beliefs.” – Roger Ebert
Quoted Via: ZenPencils.com

Photo: Crescet Moon Pre-Dawn near the Northern Terminus of the Allegheny Trail, PA, USA, September 2013 by Brett Anderson
Quote Text: “Find what you love and let it kill you.” – Charles Bukowski
Quoted Via: MarkManson.net, Find What You Love

Photo: Apple Orchard Falls, VA, USA, June 2013 by Brett Anderson
Quote Text: “It’s so hard to forget pain, but it’s even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.” – Chuck Palahniuk, Diary
Quoted Via: BrettAnderson.net, Quotes from Chuck Palahniuk

Photo: Pre-Dawn from the Shoulder of Mt. Hood, OR, USA, September 2012 by Brett Anderson
Quote Text: “Don’t make stuff because you want to make money. It will never make you enough money. Don’t make stuff because you want to get famous, because you will never feel famous enough. Make gifts for people. And work hard on making those gifts in hope that those people will notice. Maybe they will notice how hard you worked and maybe they won’t. And if they don’t notice, I know it’s frustrating. But ultimately that doesn’t change anything because your responsibility is not to the people you’re making the gift for but to the gift itself.” – John Green
Quoted Via: ZenPencils.com

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Source: UltraBackpacking.com, 2013 September Photo Quotes

Links to each quote source, or the source I am quoting it via, will open in a new browser tab. If you want even more quotes, check out my archive of monthly quote curations.

1. “Pastimes, depending on what they are, can either greatly empower us individually and collectively, or forever inhibit our development and progress as human beings and as a society. Watching sports, vegetating behind the TV in general, consuming alcohol, going shopping, and watching Hollywood movies are all examples of activities that no matter how long you do them, will never yield opportunities or spur personal development on any level, physically or intellectually…. Conversely, playing sports as a community, making movies, writing, woodworking, gardening, brewing alcohol, and nearly anything at all that is productive or encourages positive social interaction and health provides us with endless opportunities.” – Tony Cartalucci
2. “When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will go. Then it explodes and that is my idea.” – Ernest Hemingway
3. “Harmony within creates harmony without.” – Sandra Ingerman
4. “For average working folks, America was becoming a puzzle. Who was buying these two-hundred-dollar copper saucepans, anyway? And how was everyone paying for these BMW’s? Were people shrewd or just stupefyingly irresponsible?” – Daniel Suarez, Daemon
5. “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” -Greek Proverb
6. “In pursuit of knowledge, every day something is added. In the practice of the Tao, every day something is dropped.” – Laozi, Tao Te Ching
7. “Truth is simple…. Truth is old…. Truth is obvious…. There is no trick.” – Sam Davies
8. “I have two doctors—my left leg and my right.” – George Trevelyan
9. “We’ve been given more freedom than any people in the history of the world, and we’re selling it back one monthly payment at a time.” – Adam Baker
10. “The progression of today’s college student is to jettison every interest except one, and, within that one, to continually narrow the focus, learning more and more about less and less. This, despite the evidence all around us of the interconnectedness of things.” – Liz Coleman
11. “Good writing is good thinking expressed clearly.” – Mark Morgan Ford
12. “To develop the creative attitude, analyze and focus on the wanted SOLUTION; seek out and fill your mind with the FACTS; write down ideas, both sensible and seemingly wild; let the facts and ideas simmer in your mind; evaluate, recheck, settle on the creative ideas.” – Bruce Lee
13. “Keeping your sales presentation simple is extremely important. For each complication in your offer, your effectiveness drops dramatically.” – Joseph Sugarman, Triggers
14. “We are happy when we have family, we are happy when we have friends and almost all the other things we think make us happy are actually just ways of getting more family and friends.” – Dan Gilbert
15. “We were naturally born to move. Look at the human structure. I think it’s repressive not to move, and you can certainly see the tolls taken on our society. Im­mo­bil­ity is worse than mo­bil­ity.” – Dean Karnazes
16. “What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.” – John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America
17. “Quite often the flood of history is undammed or diverted by the character and actions of one man.” – Pat Frank, Alas Babylon
18. “If you do a job where someone tells you exactly what to do, he will find someone cheaper than you to do it. And yet our schools are churning out kids who are stuck looking for jobs where the boss tells them exactly what to do. Do you see the disconnect here? Every year, we churn out millions of workers who are trained to do 1925-style labor.” – Seth Godin
19. “If you don’t underestimate me, I won’t underestimate you.” – Bob Dylan
20. “People do it every day. They talk to themselves…. They see themselves as they’d like to be. They don’t have the courage you have, to just run with it.” – Tyler Durden (Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk)
21. “Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about mission statements!” – Peter Gibbons (Office Space)
22. “Nations are like people. When they grow old and rich and fat they get conservative. They exhaust their energy trying to keep things the way they are-and that’s against nature.” – Mark Bragg (Alas Babylon by Pat Frank)
23. “If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” – William Morris, “The Beauty of Life,” 1880

Links to each quote source, or the source I am quoting it via, will open in a new browser tab. If you want even more quotes, check out my archive of monthly quote curations.

1. “Just bread and water and delightful toil is all I need.” – John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra, July 7, 1869
2. “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” – Leonardo da Vinci
3. “True wilderness isn’t really a place where you have ‘wahoo moments’ or a place where you seek refuge; you know, to get away from things. Big wilderness is a place where you come to get humbled.” – Andrew Skurka
4. “Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.” – Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and The Sea
5. “As for poverty, no one need be ashamed to admit it, the real shame is in not taking practical measures to escape from it.” – Pericles
6. “I hope everybody could get rich and famous and have everything they ever dreamed of, so they will know that it’s not the answer.” – Jim Carrey
7. “Fall in love with the process, not the result.” – Mark Manson
8. “Manage your energy, not your time.” – Tony Schwartz
9. “If what I say resonates with you, it is merely because we are both branches of the same tree.” – WB Yeats
10. “If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.” – Frank A. Clark
11. “We all have the ability inside of us to whatever we want, whenever we want. We just have to stand up and be willing to do it.” – Russel Brunson
12. “If you don’t have answers to your problems after a four-hour run, you ain’t getting them.” – Christopher McDougall, Born to Run
13. “On Labor Day and Memorial Day weekends we travel for miles on these roads without seeing another vehicle, then cross a federal highway and look at cars strung bumper to bumper to the horizon. Scowling faces inside. Kids crying in the back seat. I keep wishing there were some way to tell them something but they scowl and appear to be in a hurry, and there isn’t…” – Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
14. “If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking… is freedom.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower
15. “Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.” – Napoleon Hill
16. “The sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.” – Blaise Pascal
17. “Out of the ­10,000 news stories you may have read in the last 12 months, did even one allow you to make a better decision about a serious matter in your life?” – Rolf Dobelli
18. “One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.” – Jack Kerouac
19. “Contrary to what people may say, there’s no upper limit to stupidity.” – Stephen Colbert
20. “You cannot be an attractive and life-changing presence to some people without being a joke or an embarrassment to others. You simply can’t. You have to be controversial to succeed.” – Mark Manson
21. “Every time you write code or introduce third-party services, you are introducing the possibility of failure into your system.” – Ted Dziuba
22. ‘”If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start.” – Charles Bukowski, Roll the Dice
23. “If you’re not learning, you’re wasting your time.” – Pharell Williams
24. “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” – Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
25. “Nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future.” – Chris McCandless
26. “There is no expert. You are the expert.” – Jawed Karim (co-founder of YouTube)

Links to each quote source, or the source I am quoting it via, will open in a new browser tab. If you want even more quotes, check out my archive of monthly quote curations.

1. “Nine times out of ten, sitting around strategizing is just a form of procrastination.” – Paul Graham
2. “The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” – Muriel Rukeyser
3. “Focus on the process not the result.” – Anton Krupicka
4. “It is commonly the case with technologies that you can get the best insight about how they work by watching them fail.” – Neal Stephenson
5. “The best way to know life is to love many things.” – Vincent Van Gogh
6. “Voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust
7. “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” – Henry D. Thoreau, Walden
8. “Having our dreams shattered really is nothing compared to what many others have suffered. I have come to believe that coming true is not the only purpose of a dream. Its most important purpose is to get us in touch with where dreams come from, where passion comes from, where happiness comes from. Even a shattered dream can do that for you.” – Lisa Bu
9. “I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature’s loveliness.” – John Muir
10. “Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a state of well-being & walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. But by sitting still, & the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.” – Søren Kierkegaard
11. “No way was I going to allow myself to settle into an ordinary life because it was the easy thing to do.” – David Miller, AWOL on the Appalachian Trail

Links to each quote source, or the source I am quoting it via, will open in a new browser tab. If you want even more quotes, check out my archive of monthly quote curations.

1. “Exhilarated with the mountain air, I feel like shouting this morning with excess of wild animal joy.” – John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra, July 9, 1869
2. “Genius is wisdom and youth.” – Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology
3. “Success comes in spurts.” – Craig Ballantyne
4. “Like a tree that grows stronger with more branches and roots, you need to find more and more ways to be inspired.” – Yiannis Kouros
5. “You can ignore reality, but you can’t ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.” – Ayn Rand
6. “Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.” – Plato
7. “Any time you want to change yourself, you are going to have to dismantle the reasoning your mind constructed to justify your past behaviors.” – Mark Manson
8. “I would rather watch a sunset than TV.” – Jennifer Pharr Davis, Becoming Odyssa
9. “This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time.” – Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club (More quotes from Chuck Palahniuk)
10. “If it comes easy, if it doesn’t require extraordinary effort, you’re not pushing hard enough: It’s supposed to hurt like hell.” – Dean Karnazes, Ultramarathon Man
11. “I am satisfied … I see, dance, laugh, sing.” – Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
12. “… it’s better to work highly focused for short periods of time, with breaks in between, than to be partially focused for long periods of time. Think of it as a sprint, rather than a marathon. You can push yourself to your limits for short periods of time, so long as you have a clear stopping point. And after a rest, you can sprint again.” –Tony Schwartz
13. “The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.” – Marcus Aurelius
14. “The kingdom of God is within you” – Jesus (Luke 17:21)
15. “All of this is a classic, textbook response. When governments are in trouble, they try to control everything. But these measures never work… they only make things worse.” – Simon Black
16. “The forests are our lungs outside of our bodies, just as the sun is our hearts outside of our bodies.” – Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step (More Quotes from Thich Nhat Hanh)
17. “Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on Earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.” – Thomas Jefferson
18. “Venture far, never stop.” – Jure Brkinjac
19. “I was surrounded by life and beauty. My soul was content, and my life felt full.” – Jennifer Pharr Davis, Called Again
20. “If you don’t want bubbles to burst, don’t blow them up in the first place because all bubbles burst.” – Peter Schiff
21. “Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.” – Thoreau* (*Possibly misattributed)
22. “NOW is forever. Now is the only moment that ever matters… This is the only place where original creation leads to true abundance.” – Tania Gabrielle
23. “She had been running for so long after something outside herself that she had never seen herself.” – Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step (More Quotes from Thich Nhat Hanh)
24. “Create your own standard and then surpass it.” – Mark Manson
25. “I always choose new goals, it inspires me to try something that I think may be impossible.” – Yiannis Kouros
26. “Every step along the way, getting rid of what I didn’t absolutely need was painful, but at no point did I ever miss anything once it was gone. Ever.” – Mark Manson on minimalism
27. “Most good startup ideas seem a little crazy; if they were obviously good ideas, someone would have done them already.” – Paul Graham
28. “Your success is your responsibility. Start acting like it.” – Brett Anderson
29. “It is good for a man to keep himself in such condition that he can do ten miles on short notice.” – Alfred Barron, Foot Notes, Or, Walking as a Fine Art, 1875.

If you’ve made it this far, you could probably use more quotes. Try the archive of monthly quote curations or quoted individual pages.

Hasta Luego,

Brett

“I do not believe in these protracted good-bys any more than I do in long engagements, so I will just say simple farewell and Godspeed, reader, and leave you now to your own devices.” – Ernest Hemingway, Torrents of Spring