Quotes About Balance

The chief ethical rule is the following: Thou shalt not have antifragility at the expense of the fragility of others.

Too much success is the enemy, too much failure is demoralizing.

So just as Stoicism is the domestication, not the elimination, of emotions, so is the barbell a domestication, not the elimination, of uncertainty.

Wind extinguishes a candle and energizes fire.

If your private life conflicts with your intellectual opinion, it cancels your intellectual ideas, not your private life.

If it costs you your peace, it's too expensive.

As Ennius wrote, "The good is mostly in the absence of bad"; Nimium boni est, cui nihil est mali.

good news is good news first; how good matters rather little. So to have a pleasant life you should spread these small "affects" across time as evenly as possible. Plenty of mildly good news is preferable to one single lump of great news.

True success is exiting some rat race to modulate one's activities for peace of mind

His idea is that if we were to optimize at every step in life, then it would cost us an infinite amount of time and energy. Accordingly

For the classics, philosophical insight was the product of a life of leisure; for me, a life of leisure is the product of philosophical insight.

Light control works; close control leads to overreaction

it is about the distortions of symmetry and reciprocity in life: if you have the rewards, you must also get some of the risks— not let others pay the price of your mistakes. If you inflict risk onto others and they are harmed, you need to pay some price for it.

You cannot do anything with knowledge unless you know where it stops, and the costs of using it.

As a matter of fact, your happiness depends far more on the number of instances of positive feelings, what psychologists call "positive affect," than on their intensity when they hit. In other words, good news is good news first; how good matters rather little. So to have a pleasant life you should spread these small "affects" across time as evenly as possible. Plenty of mildly good news is preferable to one single lump of great news.

Much of modern life is preventable chronic stress injury.

In a system, the sacrifices of some units—fragile units, that is, or people—are often necessary for the well-being of other units or the whole.

This visible tension between individual and collective interests is new in history…

that the burden of evidence is on those who disturb natural systems

Mother Nature knows more than he will ever know, not the other way around.

we need to shift some of our worries to bigger things.

later—unlike gardeners, who understand rather well that pruning trees strengthens them. Likewise peace—some kind of forced, constrained, non-natural peace—may be costly in lives: just

Every additional glass of wine harms you more than the preceding one

that really successful people say no to almost everything