Gladys > Gladys's Quotes

“To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”
― Mary Oliver

“I have lowered my identity. I have lowered the chattering of my mind. I don’t care about things that don’t really matter. I don’t get involved in politics. I don’t hang around unhappy people. I really value my time on this earth. I read philosophy. I meditate.”
― Eric Jorgenson, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness

“Stand and face me, my love,
and scatter the grace in your eyes.
”
― Sappho, Sweetbitter Love: Poems of Sappho

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
― Mary Oliver

“Birding shifts your perceptions, adding new layers of meaning and brokering connections: between sounds and seasons, across far-flung places, and between who we are as people and a wild world that both transcends and embraces us. In my life, it has been a window into the wondrous.”
― Christian Cooper, Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World

“Sometimes I need
only to stand
wherever I am
to be blessed.”
― Mary Oliver, Evidence: Poems

“Much of the greatest art, I find, seeks to remind us of the obvious. This is real. That's all it says. Take the time to stop and imagine or feel fully the things you already know.”
― Patrick Bringley, All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me

“Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.”
― Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook

“A work of art tends to speak of things that are at once too large and too intimate to be summed up, and they speak of them by not speaking at all.”
― Patrick Bringley, All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me

“How do we memorialize an event that is still ongoing?”
― Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being

“We, most of us, may be born with an innate desire for friendship, companionship, and love, but being good at any of those things takes work. There is no quick method for learning how to do it right. Floyd ultimately became a very wonderful and supportive husband No marriage is perfect; it’s a question of whether the marriage matters to you enough to be able to make adjustments and repairs—and we did that.”
― Nina Totenberg, Dinners with Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships

“In fact she herself once blamed me
Kyprogeneia

because I prayed
this word:
I want.”
― Sappho, If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“I'm sometimes not sure which is the more remarkable: life lives up to great paintings, or that great paintings live up to life.”
― Patrick Bringley, All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me

“Often a sign of expertise is noticing what doesn't happen.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“Those three things - autonomy, complexity and a connection between effort and reward - are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying. It is not how much money we make that ultimately makes us happy between nine and five. It's whether our work fulfills us.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“All of them have taught me that friendship is precious, that it involves showing up, that it involves supporting and helping, that it is not always about the grand gesture, but rather about the small one.”
― Nina Totenberg, Dinners with Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships

“Much of the greatest art, I find, seeks to remind us of the obvious.”
― Patrick Bringley, All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me

“What is learned out of necessity is inevitably more powerful than the learning that comes easily.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

“We think of all those we have loved and still love, and it is the eternalness of that love that brings them to this place at this time. Our remembrances do not detract from our joy but reinforce it.”
― Nina Totenberg, Dinners with Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships

“Any fool can spend money. But to earn it and save it and defer gratification—then you learn to value it differently.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

“Thus, the critical dimension in understanding whether a marriage will work or not, becomes the extent to which the male can accept the influence of the woman he loves and become socialized in emotional communication.”
― John Gottman

“We need to look at the subtle, the hidden, and the unspoken.”
― Malcolm Gladwell

“There are only two ways to influence human behavior: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it.

Very few people or companies can clearly articulate WHY they do WHAT they do. By WHY I mean your purpose, cause or belief - WHY does your company exist? WHY do you get out of bed every morning? And WHY should anyone care?

People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.

We are drawn to leaders and organizations that are good at communicating what they believe. Their ability to make us feel like we belong, to make us feel special, safe and not alone is part of what gives them the ability to inspire us.

For values or guiding principles to be truly effective they have to be verbs. It’s not “integrity,” it’s “always do the right thing.” It’s not “innovation,” it’s “look at the problem from a different angle.” Articulating our values as verbs gives us a clear idea - we have a clear idea of how to act in any situation.

Happy employees ensure happy customers. And happy customers ensure happy shareholders—in that order.

Leading is not the same as being the leader. Being the leader means you hold the highest rank, either by earning it, good fortune or navigating internal politics. Leading, however, means that others willingly follow you—not because they have to, not because they are paid to, but because they want to.

You don’t hire for skills, you hire for attitude. You can always teach skills.

Great companies don’t hire skilled people and motivate them, they hire already motivated people and inspire them. People are either motivated or they are not. Unless you give motivated people something to believe in, something bigger than their job to work toward, they will motivate themselves to find a new job and you’ll be stuck with whoever’s left.

Trust is maintained when values and beliefs are actively managed. If companies do not actively work to keep clarity, discipline and consistency in balance, then trust starts to break down.

All organizations start with WHY, but only the great ones keep their WHY clear year after year.”
― Simon Sinek, Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”
― Simon Sinek, Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't

“As the Zen Buddhist saying goes, how you do anything is how you do everything.”
― Simon Sinek, Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't

“Those three things - autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward - are, most people will agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“I would combine radical honesty with an old rule Warren Buffett has, which is praise specifically, criticize generally.”
― Eric Jorgenson, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness

“It is those who are successful, in other words, who are most likely to be given the kinds of special opportunities that lead to further success. It’s the rich who get the biggest tax breaks. It’s the best students who get the best teaching and most attention. And it’s the biggest nine- and ten-year-olds who get the most coaching and practice. Success is the result of what sociologists like to call “accumulative advantage.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“When you compete against everyone else, no one wants to help you. But when you compete against yourself, everyone wants to help you.”
― Simon Sinek, Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action