1. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
2. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
3. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
4. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
5. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
6. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
7. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
8. Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin
9. Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
10. A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov

1. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson
2. The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel
3. Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt
4. The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford
5. Mindset by Carol S. Dweck
6. The Soul of Money by Lynne Twist
7. The Behavior Gap by Carl Richards
8. Die With Zero by Bill Perkins
9. The Energy of Money by Maria Nemeth
10. Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez

1. Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson
2. The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
3. A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
4. The Hobbit, or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien
5. The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
6. The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan
7. Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb
8. The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie
9. The Dragonbone Chair by Tad Williams
10. Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson

Embrace reality: Face the facts to make informed decisions.
“Embrace reality and deal with it.”
Think ahead: Consider long-term consequences beyond immediate effects.
Systematic process: Follow a 5-step process—set goals, identify obstacles, diagnose problems, design solutions, and execute persistently.
Radical open-mindedness: Welcome diverse perspectives to boost creativity and innovation.
Learn from mistakes: View failures as opportunities for growth.
“Pain + Reflection = Progress.”

“To do justice to the figure of Kafka in its purity and peculiar beauty one must never lose sight of one thing; it is the purity and beauty of failure. The circumstances of this failure are manifold. One is tempted to say: once he was certain of eventual failure, everything worked out for him en route as in a dream. There is nothing more memorable that the fervor with which Kafka emphasized his failure.”

“Yes, there can be no innovation, learning, or creativity without failure. But failing is painful. It fuels the ‘shouldas and couldas,’ which means judgment and shame are often lying in wait”

“Failure isn’t a necessary evil. In fact, it isn’t evil at all. It is a necessary consequence of doing something new.”

“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all—in which case, you fail by default.”

“I must have no fear of failure. It was my fear of failure that first kept me from attempting the Master Work. Now, I’m beginning what I could have started ten years ago. But I’m happy at least that I didn’t wait twenty years.”

“You can’t skip chapters, that’s not how life works. You have to read every line, meet every character. You won’t enjoy all of it. Hell, some chapters will make you cry for weeks. You will read things you don’t want to read, you will have moments when you don’t want the pages to end. But you have to keep going. Stories keep the world revolving. Live yours, don’t miss out.”

1. Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as If Your Life Depended on It by Chris Voss & Tahl Raz
2. I Hear You: The Surprisingly Simple Skill Behind Extraordinary Relationships by Michael S. Sorensen
3. Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection by Charles Duhigg
4. Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In by Roger Fisher, William Ury & Bruce Patton
5. The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism by Olivia Fox Cabane

“I spent my life folded between the pages of books. In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.”

When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike. Powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less. The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish.

“It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.”

If someone is not treating you with love and respect, it is a gift if they walk away from you. If that person doesn’t walk away, you will surely endure many years of suffering with him or her. Walking away may hurt for a while, but your heart will eventually heal. Then you can choose what you really want. You will find that you don’t need to trust others as much as you need to trust yourself to make the right choices.

You can die from someone else’s misery—emotional states are as infectious as diseases. You may feel you are helping the drowning man but you are only precipitating your own disaster. The unfortunate sometimes draw misfortune on themselves; they will also draw it on you. Associate with the happy and fortunate instead.

The philosophy of Stoicism argues the idea that the only pain you really suffer is the one you create yourself.

All pain stems from resistance to things you can’t change. Negative events happen all the time for reasons beyond our control. We can, however, choose how we respond to them.

Pain is simply the result of your resistance to everything you are powerless to change.

We spend a lot of time thinking about the future and the past, but we can only live in the present and thus have no way of changing many things that make us unhappy.

You teach people how to treat you by the way you treat yourself.
If you want to make a good impression, giving yourself the value you deserve is crucial. Before expecting people to value you, think well of you, and admire you, you have to value you, think well of you and admire you. Do you follow?

You can’t expect others to believe in you if you don’t believe in you, yet. Start being proud of yourself, of who you are, of where you come from, and of what you do for a living. This is not the time to be modest! Careful though. It’s also not the time to be arrogant. I’m talking about healthy self-esteem. Knowing who you are, knowing your strength, but also knowing that you are not better than anybody else (and remembering that nobody is better than you either).

Just as you can become spiritually rich and physically rich, so too can you become mentally rich — and you can do this using four methods together:
1. Looking for the positive
2. Developing an abundance mindset
3. Making the right choices with limited information
4. Committing to lifelong learning

But first, notice what is not on the list. Mental wealth doesn’t mean having a money-savvy mindset, which is what most people mean when they speak about, write of, hype up, or sell you on “good mindset habits.”
Rather, mental wealth means a worldview based on timeless principles, as well as a flexible mind that can change when new information comes to light — and living it out. It’s not enough to know; one must also do.

You as a personality are not in competition with any other personality simply because there is not another person on the face of the earth like you, or in your particular class.
You are an individual. You are unique. You are not “like” any other person and can never become “like” any other person. You are not “supposed” to be like any other person and no other person is “supposed” to be like you.