Top 10 Reads From 2021

Top 10 favourite quotes from 2021

1. Memories, Dreams, Reflections

"For psychotherapy to be effective a close rapport is needed, so close that the doctor cannot shut his eyes to the heights and depths of human suffering. The rapport consists, after all, in a constant comparison and mutual comprehension, in the dialectical confrontation of two opposing psychic realities. If for some reason these mutual impressions do not impinge on each other, the psychotherapeutic process remains ineffective, and no change is produced. Unless both doctor and patient become a problem to each other, no solution is found."

Carl G. Jung

2. Can't Hurt Me

"In Japan there’s a sect of Zen monks that run 1,000 marathons in 1,000 days in a quest to find enlightenment through pain and suffering. I don’t know if you could call what I felt on that bed 'enlightenment,' but I do know that pain unlocks a secret doorway in the mind. One that leads to both peak performance and beautiful silence."

David Goggins

3. No Longer Human

"But I held the words back, reluctant to anger him. Society won't stand for it. It's not society. You're the one who won't stand for it—right? If you do such a thing society will make you suffer for it. It's not society. It's you, isn't it? Before you know it, you'll be ostracized by society. It's not society. You're going to do the ostracizing, aren't you? Words, words of every kind went flitting through my head. "Know thy particular fearsomeness, thy knavery, cunning and witchcraft!" What I said, however, as I wiped the perspiration from my face with a handkerchief was merely, "You've put me in a cold sweat!" I smiled. From then on, however, I came to hold, almost as a philosophical conviction, the belief: What is society but an individual?"

Osamu Dazai

4. The Mundanity of Excellence

"It is incorrect to believe that top athletes suffer great sacrifices to achieve their goals. Often, they don't see what they do as sacrificial at all. They like it."

Daniel F. Chambliss

5. Life of Pi

"I can well imagine an atheist's last words: "White, white! L-L-Love! My God!"—and the deathbed leap of faith. Whereas the agnostic, if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays beholden to dry, yeastless factuality, might try to explain the warm light bathing him by saying, "Possibly a f-f-failing oxygenation of the b-b-brain," and, to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story."

Yann Martel

6. Kokoro

"The unpleasant feeling that I had not worked hard enough was one that I had often experienced before, though only very rarely had I ever accomplished so little as I had that summer. I was weighed down by the depressing thought that such perhaps was the normal state of things in every man’s life."

Natsume Soseki

7. The Road to Wigan Pier

"Presumably, for instance, the inhabitants of Utopia would create artificial dangers in order to exercise their courage, and do dumb-bell exercises to harden muscles which they would never be obliged to use. And here you observe the huge contradiction which is usually present in the idea of progress. The tendency of mechanical progress is to make your environment safe and soft; and yet you are striving to keep yourself brave and hard. You are at the same moment furiously pressing forward and desperately holding back."

George Orwell

8. The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

"...a memory which is suddenly revived carries a great power of resuscitation. The past does not only draw us back to the past. There are certain memories of the past that have strong steel springs and, when we who live in the present touch them, they are suddenly stretched taut and then they propel us into the future."

Yukio Mishima

9. How to Take Smart Notes

"We tend to think that big transformations have to start with an equally big idea. But more often than not, it is the simplicity of an idea that makes it so powerful..."

Sonke Ahrens

10. The Design of Everyday Things

"In an earlier book, Things That Make Us Smart, I argued that it is this combination of technology and people that creates superpowerful beings. Technology does not make us smarter. People do not make technology smart. It is the combination of the two, the person plus the artifact, that is smart. Together, with our tools, we are a powerful combination. On the other hand, if we are suddenly without these external devices, then we don’t do very well. In many ways, we do become less smart."

Don Norman

👋 Thanks for making it to the end!