Welcome to TANQ.
The Art of Living‘s library of Thoughts, Anecdotes, Notes and Quotes.
TANQ is a growing central library of thoughts, anecdotes, notes and quotes that I come across during my life and learning. It was originally inspired by Ryan Holiday’s excellent article on “How and Why to Keep a Commonplace Book“.
As time goes by I’ll be developing TANQ to make it easier to explore, filter and share its contents right here on The Art of Living.
For now, here’s a snapshot from the inside:
Latest Entries
“Most bullies have themselves been bullied, and they despise kids who remind them of their own vulnerability.”
“Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives.”
“You can be fully in charge of your life only if you can acknowledge the reality of your body, in all its visceral dimensions.”
“You will not improve as a reader if all you read are books that are well within your capacity. You must tackle books that are beyond you, or, as we have said, books that are over your head.”
“One of the most remarkable things about the great philosophical books is that they ask the same sort of profound questions that children ask.”
Random Entries
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persist in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
“A key aspect of brain transformation is myelin, a substance that wraps around the nerve fibres and that can dramatically increase the speed with which signals pass through the brain. A 2005 experiment that scanned the brains of concert pianists found a direct relationship between the number of hours practised and the quantity of myelin… the very process of building knowledge transforms the hardware in which the knowledge is stored and operated.”
Use language to elicit increasingly strong reactions from people:
Soft: “How do you feel about…”
Medium: “What do you think about…”
Hard: “What is your opinion on…”
“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.”
“No writing decision is too small to be worth a large expenditure of time.”