Wood Print 12×12 in

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." — Aristotle "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." — Aristotle "Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom." — Aristotle "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts." — Aristotle "Happiness depends upon ourselves." — Aristotle "The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet." — Aristotle "Quality is not an act, it is a habit." — Aristotle "Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet." — Aristotle "The more you know, the more you realize you don't know." — Aristotle "Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work." — Aristotle "The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living." — Cicero "A room without books is like a body without a soul." — Cicero "It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop." — Confucius "Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves." — Confucius "Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it." — Confucius "Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." — Confucius "The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones." — Confucius "Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance." — Confucius "Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated." — Confucius "Wherever you go, go with all your heart." — Confucius "When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don't adjust the goals, adjust the action steps." — Confucius "Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life." — Confucius "I am looking for an honest man." — Diogenes of Sinope "It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little." — Diogenes of Sinope "It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters." — Epictetus "Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems." — Epictetus "First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do." — Epictetus "No man is free who is not master of himself." — Epictetus "Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens." — Epictetus "Only the educated are free." — Epictetus "Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it." — Epictetus "Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants." — Epictetus "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." — Lao Tzu "When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be." — Lao Tzu "Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished." — Lao Tzu "A leader is best when people barely know he exists." — Lao Tzu "Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom." — Lao Tzu "The best fighter is never angry." — Lao Tzu "Silence is a source of great strength." — Lao Tzu "Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power." — Lao Tzu "He who conquers others is strong; he who conquers himself is mighty." — Lao Tzu "Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are." — Lao Tzu "It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a great deal of it." — Lucius Annaeus Seneca "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." — Lucius Annaeus Seneca "We suffer more often in imagination than in reality." — Lucius Annaeus Seneca "Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body." — Lucius Annaeus Seneca "As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters." — Lucius Annaeus Seneca "True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future." — Lucius Annaeus Seneca "Sometimes even to live is an act of courage." — Lucius Annaeus Seneca "Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life." — Lucius Annaeus Seneca "The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts." — Marcus Aurelius "You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength." — Marcus Aurelius "Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one." — Marcus Aurelius "Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking." — Marcus Aurelius "The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury." — Marcus Aurelius "When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive." — Marcus Aurelius "Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth." — Marcus Aurelius "If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it." — Marcus Aurelius "Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together." — Marcus Aurelius "The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts." — Marcus Aurelius "The great man is he who does not lose his child-like heart." — Mencius "Friendship is one mind in two bodies." — Mencius "The measure of a man is what he does with power." — Plato "We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of t…" — Plato "Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something." — Plato "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." — Plato "The beginning is the most important part of the work." — Plato "Necessity is the mother of invention." — Plato "Courage is knowing what not to fear." — Plato "Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything." — Plato "One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferi…" — Plato "Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge." — Plato "Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth." — Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) "The mind is everything. What you think you become." — Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) "Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without." — Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) "In the end, only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go…" — Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) "You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection." — Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) "Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship." — Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) "Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment." — Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) "No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path." — Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha) "The unexamined life is not worth living." — Socrates "I know that I know nothing." — Socrates "True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world…" — Socrates "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." — Socrates "The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing." — Socrates "Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people." — Socrates "Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel." — Socrates "He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have." — Socrates "Wonder is the beginning of wisdom." — Socrates "To find yourself, think for yourself." — Socrates "The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting." — Sun Tzu "In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity." — Sun Tzu "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles." — Sun Tzu "Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak." — Sun Tzu "The greatest victory is that which requires no battle." — Sun Tzu "Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt." — Sun Tzu "Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to wi…" — Sun Tzu "Every battle is won before it is fought." — Sun Tzu "Brahman is real; the world is unreal; the individual soul is Brahman alone, not other." — Adi Shankara "Knowledge of the Self is the one direct means to liberation." — Adi Shankara "Knowledge without action is wastefulness and action without knowledge is foolishness." — Al-Ghazali "To get what you love, you must first be patient with what you hate." — Al-Ghazali "We should not be ashamed to acknowledge truth from whatever source it comes to us." — Al-Kindi "The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page." — Augustine of Hippo "The truth is like a lion; you don't have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself." — Augustine of Hippo "To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek him the greatest adventure." — Augustine of Hippo "Patience is the companion of wisdom." — Augustine of Hippo "Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe." — Augustine of Hippo "To study the self is to forget the self." — Dogen "If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?" — Dogen "The past resembles the future more than one drop of water resembles another." — Ibn Khaldun "A change in conditions is as if the entire creation had changed and the whole world been altered." — Ibn Khaldun "Ignorance leads to fear, fear leads to hatred, and hatred leads to violence." — Ibn Rushd (Averroes) "Knowledge is the conformity of the object and the intellect." — Ibn Rushd (Averroes) "The world is divided into men who have wit and no religion and men who have religion and no wit." — Ibn Rushd (Averroes) "The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by it…" — Ibn Sina (Avicenna) "The world is divided into men who have wit and no religion and men who have religion and no wit." — Ibn Sina (Avicenna) "That whose existence is necessary must necessarily be one essence." — Ibn Sina (Avicenna) "Width of knowledge is more important than depth of knowledge." — Ibn Sina (Avicenna) "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." — Moses Maimonides "The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision." — Moses Maimonides "No disease that can be treated by diet should be treated with any other means." — Moses Maimonides "You must accept the truth from whatever source it comes." — Moses Maimonides "The moving finger writes; and, having writ, moves on." — Omar Khayyam "Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life." — Omar Khayyam "The wound is the place where the Light enters you." — Rumi "Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself." — Rumi "To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible." — Thomas Aquinas "The things that we love tell us what we are." — Thomas Aquinas "There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship." — Thomas Aquinas "Beware the man of a single book." — Thomas Aquinas "Better to illuminate than merely to shine, to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplat…" — Thomas Aquinas "Knowledge is power." — Francis Bacon "If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts,…" — Francis Bacon "A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds." — Francis Bacon "Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man." — Francis Bacon "The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery." — Francis Bacon "The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself." — Michel de Montaigne "I quote others only in order the better to express myself." — Michel de Montaigne "On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom." — Michel de Montaigne "Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know." — Michel de Montaigne "You can only fight the way you practice." — Miyamoto Musashi "Do nothing which is of no use." — Miyamoto Musashi "It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both." — Niccolo Machiavelli "Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are." — Niccolo Machiavelli "The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him." — Niccolo Machiavelli "Never was anything great achieved without danger." — Niccolo Machiavelli "Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great." — Niccolo Machiavelli "Whatever feels, lives; whatever lives, depends on nourishment." — Anton Wilhelm Amo "Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, j…" — Baruch Spinoza "Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true …" — Baruch Spinoza "Happiness is not the reward of virtue, but is virtue itself." — Baruch Spinoza "The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be f…" — Baruch Spinoza "Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them." — David Hume "A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence." — David Hume "Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man." — David Hume "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions." — David Hume "Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe — the starry heavens above me and th…" — Immanuel Kant "We are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without." — Immanuel Kant "Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life." — Immanuel Kant "Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play." — Immanuel Kant "Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own understanding." — Immanuel Kant "In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doi…" — Immanuel Kant "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." — Jean-Jacques Rousseau "The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless." — Jean-Jacques Rousseau "Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet." — Jean-Jacques Rousseau "People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little." — Jean-Jacques Rousseau "The only defense against the world is a thorough knowledge of it." — John Locke "What worries you, masters you." — John Locke "New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not alr…" — John Locke "Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours." — John Locke "I think, therefore I am." — Rene Descartes "The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries." — Rene Descartes "Doubt is the origin of wisdom." — Rene Descartes "It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well." — Rene Descartes "Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it." — Rene Descartes "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." — Voltaire "Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers." — Voltaire "Common sense is not so common." — Voltaire "The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing." — Voltaire "Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd." — Voltaire "Think for yourself and let others enjoy the privilege of doing so too." — Voltaire "Compassion is the basis of morality." — Arthur Schopenhauer "A man can be himself only so long as he is alone." — Arthur Schopenhauer "Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see." — Arthur Schopenhauer "The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom." — Arthur Schopenhauer "All truth passes through three stages: first it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, third it is acc…" — Arthur Schopenhauer "Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it." — Frantz Fanon "I am not a prisoner of history. I should not seek there for the meaning of my destiny." — Frantz Fanon "He who has a why to live can bear almost any how." — Friedrich Nietzsche "Without music, life would be a mistake." — Friedrich Nietzsche "That which does not kill us makes us stronger." — Friedrich Nietzsche "There are no facts, only interpretations." — Friedrich Nietzsche "In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule." — Friedrich Nietzsche "The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends." — Friedrich Nietzsche "You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star." — Friedrich Nietzsche "It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages." — Friedrich Nietzsche "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster." — Friedrich Nietzsche "And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music." — Friedrich Nietzsche "Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined." — Henry David Thoreau "Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth." — Henry David Thoreau "Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify." — Henry David Thoreau "The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it." — Henry David Thoreau "Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves." — Henry David Thoreau "What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals." — Henry David Thoreau "Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign." — John Stuart Mill "The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good, in our own way." — John Stuart Mill "A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction." — John Stuart Mill "Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing." — John Stuart Mill "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." — Karl Marx "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce." — Karl Marx "The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people." — Karl Marx "Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form." — Karl Marx "Social progress can be measured by the social position of the female sex." — Karl Marx "To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment." — Ralph Waldo Emerson "What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." — Ralph Waldo Emerson "The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be." — Ralph Waldo Emerson "Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." — Ralph Waldo Emerson "For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness." — Ralph Waldo Emerson "It is not the length of life, but the depth." — Ralph Waldo Emerson "A literary genius, it is said, resembles all, though no one resembles him." — Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan "When we think we know, we cease to learn." — Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." — Soren Kierkegaard "Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom." — Soren Kierkegaard "The most common form of despair is not being who you are." — Soren Kierkegaard "People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use." — Soren Kierkegaard "The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays." — Soren Kierkegaard "Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached." — Swami Vivekananda "Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life; think of it, dream of it, live on that idea." — Swami Vivekananda "The study of ethics is the study of human beings." — Watsuji Tetsuro "Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does." — William James "The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another." — William James "A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices." — William James "Begin to be now what you will be hereafter." — William James "In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer." — Albert Camus "The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act …" — Albert Camus "Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be…" — Albert Camus "You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of." — Albert Camus "Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is." — Albert Camus "Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?" — Albert Camus "Life is the sum of all your choices." — Albert Camus "The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil." — Hannah Arendt "Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom." — Hannah Arendt "The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution." — Hannah Arendt "Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it." — Hannah Arendt "Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does." — Jean-Paul Sartre "Hell is other people." — Jean-Paul Sartre "Freedom is what we do with what is done to us." — Jean-Paul Sartre "Life begins on the other side of despair." — Jean-Paul Sartre "We are our choices." — Jean-Paul Sartre "Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance." — Jean-Paul Sartre "In life the challenge is not so much to figure out how best to play the game; the challenge is to figure out …" — Kwame Anthony Appiah "A tenable cosmopolitanism tempers a respect for difference with a respect for actual human beings." — Kwame Anthony Appiah "Where there is power, there is resistance." — Michel Foucault "People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don't know is what wha…" — Michel Foucault "Knowledge is not for knowing: knowledge is for cutting." — Michel Foucault "Visibility is a trap." — Michel Foucault "If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all." — Noam Chomsky "Education is a system of imposed ignorance." — Noam Chomsky "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion." — Noam Chomsky "Optimism is a strategy for making a better future." — Noam Chomsky "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." — Simone de Beauvoir "Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay." — Simone de Beauvoir "I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely." — Simone de Beauvoir "One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others." — Simone de Beauvoir