Quotes About Commitment

If you want to be a garbage man, be a garbage man, but be the best garbage man you can be. (p. 8)

Ne vois-tu pas que, si les gens de métier s'accommodent jusqu'à un certain point aux goûts des particuliers, ils n'en restent pourtant pas moins attachés à la raison de leur art et ne supportent pas de s'en écarter?

Life grows relative to one's investment in it.

Those who lack faith and commitment live without purpose. They do not work for the sake of the goal but only for their own pleasure, to gain honor or money.

Anytime you are tempted to resort to violence, this is the bottom line: if you ain't ready to die for it or kill for it, don't do it.

But i couldn't. Was nowhere near ready for a committed relationship, and it wouldn't be fair. I needed time - to become the right man for a woman like you.

Every man is worth just so much as the things about which he busies himself.

If unwilling to rise in the morning, say to thyself, 'I awake to do the work of a man.

Give your heart to the trade you have learnt, and draw refreshment from it.

Never value anything as profitable that compels you to break your promise, to lose your self-respect, to hate any man, to suspect, to curse, to act the hypocrite, to desire anything that needs walls and curtains:

our own worth is measured by what we devote our energy to.

The fencer's weapon is picked up and put down again. The boxer's is part of him. All he has to do is clench his fist.

every man is worth   just so much as the things are worth about which he busies himself. 

The student as boxer, not fencer. The fencer's weapon is picked up and put down again. The boxer's is part of him. All he has to do is clench his fist.

Stick to what's in front of you - idea, action, utterance.

Never shirk the proper dispatch of your duty, no matter if you are freezing or hot, groggy or well-rested, vilified or praised, not even if dying or pressed by other demands.

From Alexander the Platonic, not frequently nor without necessity to say to any one, or to write in a letter, that I have not leisure; nor continually to excuse the neglect of duties required by our relations to those with whom we live, by alleging urgent occupations.

It is precisely its unorthodox touches—its intimation of the idea of a personal god, its flashes of vulnerability and pain, its unwavering commitment to virtue above pleasure and to tranquillity above happiness, its unmistakable stamp of an uncompromisingly honest soul seeking the light of grace in a dark world—that lend the work its special power to charm and inspire.

Love the discipline you know, and let it support you. Entrust

Remember what Marcus Aurelius said: Accept the things to which life binds you, and love the people with whom life brings you together, but do so with all your heart.

No religion, no Ethical philosophy is worth anything, if the teacher has not lived the life of an apostle, and been ready to die the death of a martyr.

Should not thou rather blame thyself, who, when upon very good grounds of reason, thou mightst have thought it very probable, that such a thing would by such a one be committed, didst not only not foresee it, but moreover dost wonder at it, that such a thing should be.

Indifference to external events. And a commitment to justice in your own acts. Which means: thought and action resulting in the common good. What you were born to do.

Practice even what seems impossible.