YURUI'S FAVOURITES

YURUI'S FAVOURITES

The top 1% of content I’ve consumed.

My favourite quotes, books, articles, blogs, newsletters, speeches, videos, podcasts, movies, and poems.

If you’ve asked me for a recommendation, I’ve sent you this page. If you think I should read or listen to something, please let me know!

Quick Notes

In terms of what I enjoy consuming, and hence descendingly ordered by volume, I’ve been exposed to:
Quotes/tweets > email newsletters > articles/blogs > speeches/videos > books > podcasts

Also worth noting that quotes are short-form with higher ROI, but sometimes sitting down with books and podcasts for hours helps internalise learnings much better. I like setting limits to prevent cognitive overstimulation.

I read at 800-1000wpm, listen to podcasts at 3-3.5x speed, and type at ~140wpm (on the Dvorak keyboard) - hence I much prefer reading as a media of learning over listening. Both 1000% have their own perks.

Before you dive in: Treat your to-read pile like a river.

Quotes

I’ve come across thousands of quotes throughout the years.

Here are the best ones that have stuck with me:

  • “To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man’s life.” - T.S. Eliot

  • “Many will influence and impact your life. But never let others tell you how to live your life. You have the power to be who you want to be. To do whatever it is you want to do.” - Anon

  • “I think, therefore I am.” - Rene Descartes

  • “It is because he is thus free from striving that therefore no one in the world is able to strive with him.” - Laozi

  • “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will experience a success unimagined in common hours.” - Henry David Thoreau

  • “Don't fear failure. Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.” - Bruce Lee

  • “A life poorly lived only serves to amplify, or even create the horrors of death entirely. The answer to death is not what happens after, during death, or even why we must die. But instead, how we live.” - Anon

  • “What’s meant for you will reach you even if it’s beneath two mountains, and what’s not meant for you won’t reach you even if it’s between your lips.” - Umar Ibn Al Khatab

  • “Regrets won’t change yesterday. Anxiety won’t change tomorrow. Even the darkest nights will end, and the sun will rise again. Find peace in the imperfect present.” - Anon

  • “A man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor.” - Alexis Carrel

  • “Change has become a constant; managing it has become an expanding discipline. The way we embrace it defines our future.” - Queen Elizabeth II

Find more at Yurui’s Favourite Quotes. I really enjoy coming back to these every now a then.

Books

I’ve almost exclusively read non-fiction for the past couple of years, and I’m trying to broaden my horizons. If you have any good fiction reads, let me know!

  • The Almanack of Naval Ravikant (must-read for anyone curious enough to stumble onto this page)

  • Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

  • Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, Letters from a Stoic by Seneca and The Dao De Jing by Laozi

  • Zero To One by Peter Thiel

  • When Breath Becomes Air by Paulo Coelho

  • Meditations on First Philosophy by Rene Descartes

  • The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli

The above message is outdated… I find that I tend to enjoy fiction more and get trapped in the worlds of the characters I read about.

  • The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

  • Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

  • Karla and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

  • The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

  • Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu

  • Dune by Frank Herbert

  • Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

  • 1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

  • W;t by Margaret Edson

(Non) Fiction:

  • Virgil’s Aeneid

  • Homer’s Iliad + Odyssey, Aeschylus’ Orestia, Sophocles’ Oedipus series

Blogs/Newsletters

I always read these guys’ newsletters:

Articles (all these are amazing)

Speeches

Videos

Podcasts

  • The Joe Rogan Experience - David Goggins and Naval episodes were favourites

  • Huberman Lab podcast

  • Diary of a CEO - Mo Gawdat, Jordan Peterson episodes excellent

  • Lex Fridman’s podcast

  • A View from the Top - Stanford GSB

Movies

  • Everything, Everywhere, All At Once

  • Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

  • How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies

  • Triangle of Sadness

  • To Live

  • Kung Fu Panda 1-4

  • Blade Runner

  • It’s Such a Beautiful Day

  • Interstellar

  • Forrest Gump

  • Soul

  • The Polar Express

Poems

  • The Aeneid by Virgil

  • Ode by Arthur O’Shaughnessy

  • Lays of Ancient Rome by Thomas Babington Macaulay

  • So Many Books, So Little Time by Haki R. Madhubuti

  • If by Rudyard Kipling

  • Eloisa to Abelard by Alexander Pope