“Turn your wounds into wisdom.” 
― Oprah Winfrey

 

 In the book you write, “The problem with life’s purpose is that we know damn well what it is, but are unwilling to face the changes in our lives that a commitment to self-transcendence, to being the best human being we could possibly be, would entail.” 

 

Having reached a point in life where my years of adventure and romance seem well behind me, I often tell people that now I’m “in it” for the wisdom ... Hidden in short phrases or quotes ... Speak less, say more

Be Brave: be hungry for your voice to be heard and to articulate your soul, no matter the cost... You live only once

Ernest Hemingway's "Iceberg Theory" deals with the basic principle that "less is more." 

If a writer of a prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movemen of the iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. The writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.  --Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon

Knowledge is like underwear. It is useful to have it, but not necessary to show it off

 

“If you have three people in your life that you can trust, you can consider yourself the luckiest person in the whole world.”

– Selena Gomez

​Only trust someone who can see these three things in you: the sorrow behind your smile, the love behind your anger, and the reason behind your silence.

Wise people continue to doubt themselves (and that’s part of what makes them wise)

Wisdom derives more from mistakes and failures than from success

  What Matters in Old Age: Rereading, Reconsidering and Reassessing  “Late-Life Love” is an easier read than “Memoir of a Debulked Woman,” although there are moments when pain sears through. One night Gubar has an “accident” — her excrement-containing ostomy bag, girdled to her stomach, oozes with messy seepage. Cleaning up, she catches sight of herself in the bathroom mirror. There’s “every mark of an old crock: a tall scarecrow with a balding head, no eyebrows or eyelashes, a bump on my chest where a port was embedded, abdominal surgical scars, no pubic hair, a plastic bag hanging from my belly, what little flesh there is hanging downward too. I don’t look like the person I used to be; I am not the person I used to be.”Well, as Bette Davis said, growing old ain't for sissies.There is also, as for life in general, no one-size-fits-all.

 "A wise man, recognizing that the world is but an illusion, does not act as if it is real, so he escapes the suffering".

~ Buddha

"He dares to be a fool, and that is the first step in the direction of wisdom." ~ James Huneker

"It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf."

~ Walter Lippman

"Just as a fire is covered by smoke and a mirror is obscured by dust, just as the embryo rests deep within the womb, wisdom is hidden by selfish desire."

~ Bhagavad Gita

But I could be wrong. Being wrong, I realised, is how I’ve spent most of my life: misinterpreting, misunderstanding, misjudging, miscommunication. Words slip and slide, as T.S Eliot said, or as Stow put it, ‘words can’t cope’ ... 

  We shouldn’t confuse ‘Don’t! Stop!’ with ‘Don’t stop’. 

As Shakespeare noted:  “The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose."

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