Tao Te Ching
Miguel Guasch
Confidence
We normally think that the foundation for success consists in mainly intelligence, skill, natural abilities, and hard work. Experience however, quickly dissolves this opinion. People without much intelligence or skill frequently become quite successful and—probably more often—people of great intelligence and skill fail miserably. The missing factor? Confidence. As scam artists, politicians, and actors daily demonstrate; projecting confidence in the midst of confusion, uncertainty, and ignorance most often brings success. This proves true even when the confidence is based on deception, acting, even lying. When based on a personal experience of basic goodness and the sacredness of perception; confidence has few limits.
Quotes (91)
“Let your thoughts flow past you, calmly; keep me near, at every moment; trust me with your life, because I am you, more than you yourself are.”
“Because one believes in oneself, one doesn’t try to convince others. Because one is content with oneself, one doesn’t need others’ approval. Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her.”
“Those with outer courage dare to die, those with inner courage dare to live.”
“For men who have no faith, it is impossible to have pure dharma, like planting a burned seed in a field and expecting a green shoot to come.”
“No matter where or how far you wander, the light is only a split second, a half-breath away. It is never too late to recognize the clear light.”
“In seeing victory, not going beyond what everyone knows is not skilled… One skilled at battle takes a stand in the ground of no defeat… Therefore, the victorious military is first victorious and after that does battle.”
“To act without needing a reason… to ride the current of what is – this is the primal virtue.”
“Yielding is being free of self-interest. Being free of self-interest is ruling the world. Ruling the world is merging personal virtue with that of Heaven and doing this is being one with the Way.”
“If you really put a small value upon yourself, rest assured that the world will not raise your price.”
“It must not be supposed that innate vices can be completely eradicated by education; but, the lingering traces of inborn temperament that cannot be eliminated by philosophy are so slight that there is nothing to prevent men from leading a life worthy of the gods.”
“I have built a monument more lasting than bronze and set higher than the pyramids of kings. I shall not wholly die.”
“It's not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It's because we dare not venture that they are difficult.”
“Be confident in yourself. You have already ascended here and now, and no longer need someone to show you the way. Open your eyes and see.”
“If a reader is brave enough and goes straight forward in his meditation, no delusions can disturb him. But if he hesitates one moment, he is as a person watching from a small window for a horseman to pass by, and in a wink he has missed seeing.”
“Come where thou need not to learn from me,
For thou shalt, by thine own experience,
Be able in a professorial chair to lecture on this subject
Better than Virgil, while he was alive”
“It may quite well be that without cause you are thus in despair.
How can you tell beforehand how you'll fare?
And why must you the worst always suppose,
Although the outcome you nor no one knows?
”
“And therefore, at the king's court, my brother,
Each man for himself, there is no other.”
“Meditation beads and the forehead streak, those are my scarves and my rings. That's enough feminine wiles for me. I praise the Mountain Energy night and day.”
“Peace is not the absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition of benevolence, confidence, justice.”
“This Fire is discerned in Virgil, but discerned as through a glass, reflected from Homer, more shining than fierce, but every where equal and constant.
”
“Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Have courage to use your own reason!”
“Democracy restores to man a consciousness of his value, teaches him by the removal of authority and oppression to listen to the dictates of reason, gives him confidence to treat all other men as his fellow human beings, and induces him to regard them no loner as enemies against whom to be upon his guard, but as brethren whom it comes him to assist.”
“Be like the bird that, passing on her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing that she hath wings.”
“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.”
“Never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. People will take you very much at your own reckoning.”
“if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams… In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.”
“Up, up, up and up!
Face your game and play it!
The night is past, behold the sun!
The idols fall, the lie is done!”
“with that solid, imperturbable ease and good-humor which is infections, and—like great grassy hills in the sunshine—quiets even an irritated egotism, and makes it rather ashamed of itself”
“You will hardly demand that his confidence should have a basis in external facts... it is a comfortable disposition leading us to expect that the wisdom of providence or the folly of our friends, the mysteries of luck or the still greater mystery of our high individual value in the universe, will bring about agreeable issues.”
“The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.”
“that lavishly generous confidence in the worthiness of average human nature to be told all truth, the lack of which in Goethe made him an inspiration to the few but a cold riddle to the many.”
“And so, onwards... along a path of wisdom, with a hearty tread, a hearty confidence… be your own source of experience., throw off your discontent, forgive yourself, merge everything you have lived through.”
“What is it that we combat in Christianity? That it aims at destroying the strong, at breaking their spirit, at exploiting their moments of weariness.. until the strong perish through their excessive self-contempt of which Pascal is the most famous example.”
“The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.”
“Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained”
“If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.”
“Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.”
“The more uncertain I have felt about myself, the more there has grown up in me a feeling of kinship with all things... that alienation which so long separated me from the world has become transferred into my own inner world, and has revealed to me an unexpected unfamiliarity with myself.”
“We dare to appeal to the whole man, to his capacity to think and feel, exhorting him to know himself and to be true to himself. We reaffirm our trust in the profound qualities of his nature. And our living. experiences are proving us right.”
“Instead of narrowing your world and simplifying your soul, you will have at the last to take the whole world into your soul, cost what it may.”
“Confidence... thrives on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection and on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live.”
“The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.”
“Three kinds of souls, three prayers:
1) I am a bow in your hands, Lord. Draw me, lest I rot.
2) Do not overdraw me, Lord. I shall break.
3) Overdraw me, Lord, and who cares if I break.”
“My life's greatest benefactors have been journeys and dreams... I have been ashamed many times in my life because I caught my soul not daring to do what supreme folly—the essence of life—called me to do.”
“I am the son of lightning, grandson of thunder's howl;
At will I flash and thunder, at will I fling down hail.”
“We must unlearn our ideas about an unchangeable human nature and an omnipotent environment. There is no knowable limit to change or growth; and perhaps there is nothing impossible but thinking makes it so.”
“Today I have so much to do:
I must kill memory once and for all,
I must turn my soul to stone,
I must learn to live again—”
“Even so, one step from my grave, I believe that cruelty, spite, and the powers of darkness will in time be crushed by the spirit of light.”
“Every day we slaughter our finest impulses… the tender shoots we stifle because we lack the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty... That is why we get a heartache.”
“So now when he looked at the woman he wanted, it was no simple lust that he felt. He wanted her in many ways to fill out his own being in its lacks, and he was pleased to think her learned and different from himself, and because he knew his own worth, he was not afraid to let her be in some ways better than himself, and he felt her like him in his deepest parts.”
“All things are possible until they are proved impossible — and even the impossible may only be so, as of now.”
“Even if, deep in my heart, I thought we were all blind atoms in a world as limited as a stroke of a pendulum, I and my sort would struggle against tradition; try, at least, to displace old cants with new ones.”
“Optimism disregards the present but is a source of inspiration, of vitality, and hope when other have given up. It empowers us with confidence and enables us to claim the future instead of abandoning it to an enemy.”
“The arrogance of the artist is a very profound thing, and it fortifies you.”
“When we no longer confuse ourselves with the definition of ourselves that others have given us, we are at once universal and unique.”
“Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them—if you want to.”
“The trouble with girls is, if they like a boy, no matter how big a bastard he is, they'll say he has an inferiority complex and if they don't like him, no matter how nice a guy he is, or how big an inferiority complex he has, they'll say he's conceited. Even smart girls do it.”
“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”
“Great things are accomplished by talented people who believe they will accomplish them.”
“We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.”
“Sí, se puede" (Spanish for "Yes, one can" or, roughly, "Yes, it can be done")”
“You have to have confidence in your ability, and then be tough enough to follow through. If you accept failure as a possibility, you don't set high goals, you don't branch out, you don't try - you don't take the risk.”
“With time and a kindly librarian, any unskilled person can learn how to build a replica of the Taj Mahal.”
“Power expressed without foresight always returns eventually, reverses confidence into pathetic impotence.”
“With realization of one’s own potential and self-confidence in one’s ability, one can build a better world.”
“The only reason we don't open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don't feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else's eyes.”
“You don't have to dress up in fancy costumes, you don't have to have someone—or a whole organization—behind you to prove that what you're doing is right”
“The Buddhist approach is not based on hope. It would look at the chaos and problems that exist as delightful and something to work on relaxed with the turmoil in complete confidence.”
“If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that... I believe in what I do, and I'll say it.”
“I try my best to be just like I am but everybody wants you to be just like them... I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more”
“When we make a conscious choice to seize the day, we are making a commitment to being active rather than passive beings, to pursuing our own path rather than one determined for us, to living in this moment rather than waiting for the next . And through that act of decision, we gain a sense of purpose by becoming the author of our own life.”
“That inner yün magnetizes the yün of outer things. When our inner yün connects with the yün of the phenomenal world, we feel rich—much richer than most wealthy people”
“If there was a single thread running through the life of Angelou it was her carpe diem approach to living... She was an 'experimentalist', someone who viewed life as a smorgasbord of possibilities and experiences there for the tasting even when it involved risk and the prospect of failure.”
“We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”
“Confidence cannot mature without the acceptance of uncertainty... But if we know that there is a bigger reality in which we live, we can become less afraid of our own authenticity.”
“Instead of rejecting the problems and emotions, or surrendering to them, we can befriend them, working through them to reach an enduring, authentic experience of our inherent wisdom, confidence, clarity, and joy.”
“Things are better than ever before. Things are still quite bad. Things can get much worse. This adds up to a somewhat optimistic view because if you realize things are better than before, this means we can make them even better.”
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