- Independent inquiry is needed in your search for truth, not dependence on anyone else's view or a mere book
- To free one's self from preconceived notions, prejudices and conditioned responses is essential to understanding truth and reality
- Reality and perception. There is a difference. The world and our reaction to it
- Don't neglect life by worrying about death. Have no regrets. Do what you want to do and with sincerity and to the best of your ability. You can't ask much more from life than that
- Don't seek, but allow
- Sincere thought means thought of concentration (quiet awareness). The thought of a distracted mind cannot be sincere
- Instead of dedicating your life to actualize a concept of what you should be like, actualize yourself. The process of maturing does not mean to become a captive of conceptualization. It is to come to the realization of what lies in our innermost selves
- Concepts prevent feeling. Don't think - feel!
- Any idea that is constantly held in the mind and emotionalized, begins at once to clothe itself in the most convenient and appropriate physical form that is available
- Perception is awareness without choice, nonjudgmental observation
- To be humble to superiors is duty; to equals is courtesy; to inferiors is nobleness; and to all, safety!
- To be unconsciously conscious or consciously unconscious is the secret of Nirvana
- Conscience is your pilot
- To understand your fear is the beginning of really seeing
- The more we value things, the less we value ourselves. The more we depend upon others for esteem, the less self-sufficient we are
- Real living is living for others
- Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart
- Love is an egotism of two
- The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination.
- Happiness is the appropriate moral behavior for the appropriate situation
- The three things most difficult are: to keep a secret, to forget an injury, to make good use of leisure
- To be able to do the things we want sometimes requires the performance of a few we don't
- Defeat is education
- In solitude you are least alone. Loneliness is only an opportunity to cut adrift and find yourself
- Anxiety is the gap between now and then. If you are in the now, you can't be anxious
- To change with change is the changeless state
- It's not the job but how you do it. The reward is in the action, not from it
- Success means doing something sincerely and whole-heartedly. And you have to have the help of others to achieve it
- Simplicity is the last step in art and the beginning of nature
- To formalize something is to make progress impossible. Don't become a slave to borders, styles, patterns, dogma
- To view totality, one has to be a total outsider
What I got out of it
- A good compilation of Bruce's quotes and thoughts on a variety of topics. Will be useful to turn to at times but doesn't provide the context that some of the other books in the Bruce Lee Library Series do
