balance quotes

Shun no toil to make yourself remarkable by some talent or other; yet do not devote yourself to one branch exclusively. Strive to get clear notions about all. Give up no science entirely; for science is but one.

It’s very important that we re-learn the art of resting and relaxing. Not only does it help prevent the onset of many illnesses that develop through chronic tension and worrying; it allows us to clear our minds, focus, and find creative solutions to problems.

If you love something – and there are things that I love – you do want more and more and more of it, but that’s not the way to produce good work.

Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!

The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.

I don’t think there is anything wrong in earning money from the sport you love. If you work hard and get benefits from it, there is no harm. The day you feel that you are not working hard and are only looking at the benefits, that’s where the problem is.

Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth; give him too much, the same.

I don’t believe you could be a 39-year-old quarterback in the NFL and eat cheeseburgers every day. I want to be able to do what I love to do for a long time.

Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.

On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.

Just as discipline and freedom are opposing forces that must be balanced, leadership requires finding the equilibrium in the dichotomy of many seemingly contradictory qualities between one extreme and another.

When I feel I’m doing too much, I do less if I can.

Some people carry their heart in their head and some carry their head in their heart. The trick is to keep them apart yet working together.

Use, do not abuse… neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.

He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise.

Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law. If it goes past the centre of gravity on one side, it must go a like distance on the other; and it is only after a certain time that it finds the true point at which it can remain at rest.

Nature abhors annihilation.

If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health.

You know, I live a monastic lifestyle. No, I do. I do live in extremes, basically. I go back and forth. Once every six months, I’ll have a day where I eat more chocolate than has ever been consumed by a human being.

He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.

You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.

If one oversteps the bounds of moderation, the greatest pleasures cease to please.

I want to make something that is breathtaking. Of course, you can’t make something that is always breathtaking, or you would never be able to breathe. You would collapse.

I always try to do as much as I can do. I’m never a person that does not enough, because I’d regret not doing enough and think I probably could have done more. I probably go too far and have to reel myself back in, which works in some things, and other things it doesn’t work.

Couples are wholes and not wholes, what agrees disagrees, the concordant is discordant. From all things one and from one all things.

We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.

Control and surrender have to be kept in balance. That’s what surfers do – take control of the situation, then be carried, then take control. In the last few thousand years, we’ve become incredibly adept technically. We’ve treasured the controlling part of ourselves and neglected the surrendering part.

I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind.

Perhaps when music has been shouting for so long, a quieter voice seems attractive.

The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.

Nature does nothing in vain.

My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each others‘ negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts.

I think I don’t take myself too seriously. You know as far as, it’s a fun life. I take my music serious, but I like to have fun.

There is more to life than increasing its speed.

To be frank, it sometimes seems that the American idea of freedom has more to do with my freedom to do what I want than your freedom to do what you want. I think that, in Europe, we’re probably better at understanding how to balance those competing claims, though not a lot.

Beware the hobby that eats.

Health is the soul that animates all the enjoyments of life, which fade and are tasteless without it.

The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.

The superfluous, a very necessary thing.

Fame is like caviar, you know – it’s good to have caviar but not when you have it at every meal.

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.

Part of the secret of a success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.

The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful and then only for a short while.

A career is wonderful, but you can’t curl up with it on a cold night.

He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.

The average family spends 30 hours in front of a television, and they say they don’t have the time to have a balanced, integrated life.

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.

That is how you get to be a writer, incidentally: you feel somehow marginal, somehow slightly off-balance all the time.

In general, mankind, since the improvement of cookery, eats twice as much as nature requires.

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.

It is normal to give away a little of one’s life in order not to lose it all.

I am like a man so busy in letting rooms in one end of his house, that he can’t stop to put out the fire that is burning the other.

I hope to stand firm enough to not go backward, and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the country’s cause.