- "Discard your thirst for books, so that you won't die in bitterness."
- "...the soul is a dream and mist, life is warfare and a journey far from home..."
- "Anyone with a feeling for nature - a deeper sensitivity - will find it all gives pleasure."
- "He cares nothing for their praise - men who can't even meet their own standards."
- "Cheerfulness. Without requiring other people's help."
- "Keep the spirit inside you undamaged, as if you might have to give it back at any moment."
- "...doing what's right sometimes requires patience."
- "Keep this refuge in mind: the back roads of your self."
- "It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character. Otherwise it cannot harm you - inside or out."
- "Is emerald suddenly flawed if no one admires it?"
- "...to do less, better."
- "(Nature) produced you; now it produces this."
- "Hand yourself over to Clotho voluntarily, and let her spin you into whatever she pleases."
- "Everything transitory - the knower and the known."
- "Nothing that goes on in anyone else's mind can harm you. ... Then where is harm to be found? In your capacity to see it. Stop doing that and everything will be fine."
- "A little wisp of soul carrying a corpse." - Epictetus
- "Practice the virtues you can show."
- "Let's accept it - as we accept what the doctor prescribes. It may not always be pleasant, but we embrace it - because we want to get well."
- "Look at the way the people around you behave. Even the best of them are hard to put up with."
- "Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts."
- "What stands in the way becomes the way."
- "So other people hurt me? That's their problem. Their character and actions are not mine."
- "...be tolerant with others and strict with yourself."
- "i. Not to let others hold you back. ii. To locate goodness in thinking and doing the right thing, and to limit your desires to that."
- "The best revenge is not to be like that."
- "(People) refuse to admire their contemporaries, the people whose lives they share."
- Not to assume it's impossible because you find it hard. But to recognize that if it's humanly possible, you can do it too."
- "...treat everything around you as a dream."
- "When you need encouragement, think of the qualities the people around you have."
- "Use the setback to practice other virtues."
- "Forget the future. When and if it comes, you'll have the same resources to draw on - the same logos."
- "When people injure you, ask yourself what good or harm they thought would come of it. If you understand that, you'll feel sympathy rather than outrage or anger. Your sense of good and evil may be the same as theirs, or near it, in which case you have to excuse them. Or your sense of good and evil may differ from theirs. In which case they're misguided and deserve your compassion. Is that so hard?"
- "Treat what you don't have as nonexistent."
- "The parts (of the body) that pain affects - let them speak for themselves, if they can."
- (Socrates) didn't make himself the slave of other people's ignorance."
- "It's quite possible to be a good man without anyone realizing it. Remember that."
- "It's silly to try to escape other people's faults. They are inescapable. Just try to escape your own."
- "You could be good today. But instead you choose tomorrow."
- "You have to assemble your life yourself - action by action."
- "Don't try to picture everything bad that could possibly happen. Stick with the situation at hand, and ask, 'Why is this so unbearable? Why can't I endure it?' You'll be embarrassed to answer. Then remind yourself that past and future have no power over you. Only the present - and even that can be minimized."
- "People out for posthumous fame forget that the Generations To Come will be the same annoying people they know now."
- "Is it a sign of self-respect to regret nearly everything you do?"
- "To fear pain is to fear something that's bound to happen."
- "Leave other people's mistakes where they lie."
- "Every transformation a kind of dying. Was that so terrible?"
- "If they've injured you, then they're the ones who suffer for it. But have they?"
- "...why not pray for something else instead of for things to happen or not to happen? Pray not to feel fear. Or desire, or grief."
- "The twining strands of fate wove both of them together: your own existence and the things that happen to you."
- "An unobtrusive confidence - hidden in plain sight."
- "The world longs to create what will come to be. I tell it 'I share your longing.'"
- "A glorious reputation handed down by leaves."
- "It was nature that bound you to them - that tied the knot. And nature that now unties you."
- Look at the individual parts and move from analysis to indifference. Apply this to life as a whole."
- "Don't let them stop you from putting up with them..."
- "All souls are prevented from treating others as they deserve, just as they are kept from truth: unwillingly. Which is why they resent being called unjust, or arrogant, or greedy - any suggestion that they aren't good neighbors."
- "You've made enough mistakes yourself. You're just like them. ... Even if cowardice has kept you from them."
- "How much more damage anger and grief do than the things that cause them."
- "Kindness is invincible, provided it's sincere."
- "...to say what you don't think - the definition of absurdity."
- "...we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own."
- "If it's not true, don't say it."
- "Nothing belongs to anyone. Children, body, life itself - all of them come from that same source."
- "I've never seen my soul either. And yet I revere it."
aug 19 2017 ∞
dec 17 2018 +
dec 17 2018 +