For the only safe harbour in this life's tossing, troubled sea is to refuse to be bothered about what the future will bring and to stand ready and confident, squaring the breast to take without skulking or flinching whatever fortune hurls at us. (查看原文)
Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We’ve been using them not because we needed them but because we had them. Look at the number of things we buy because others have bought them or because they’re in most people’s houses. One of the causes of the troubles that beset us is the way our lives are guided by the example of others; instead of being set to rights by reason we’re seduced by convention. (查看原文)
...if we realize that there are two classes of things attracting or repelling us. We are attracted by wealth, pleasures, good looks, political advancement and various other welcoming and enticing prospects: we are repelled by exertion, death, pain, disgrace and limited means. It follows that we need to train ourselves not to crave for the former and not to be afraid of the latter. Let us fight the battle the other way round – retreat from the things that attract us and rouse ourselves to meet the things that actually attack us. (查看原文)
...the kind of talk to which we would be better to turn our ears is this: ‘No man’s good by accident. Virtue has to be learnt. Pleasure is a poor and petty thing. No value should be set on it: it’s something we share with dumb animals – the minutest, most insignificant creatures scutter after it. Glory’s an empty, changeable thing, as fickle as the weather. Poverty’s no evil to anyone unless he kicks against it. Death is not an evil. What is it then? The one law mankind has that is free of all discrimination. Superstition is an idiotic heresy: it fears those it should love: it dishonours those it worships. For what difference does it make whether you deny the gods or bring them into disrepute?’ These are things which should be learnt and not just learnt but learnt by heart. Philosophy has ... (查看原文)
Devotion to what is right is simple, devotion to what is wrong is complex and admits of infinite variations.
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the chief cause of this disease, in my opinion, is an attitude of disdain for a normal existence. (查看原文)
Meanwhile, since I owe you the daily allowance, I'll tell you what took my fancy in the writings of Hecato today. 'What progress have I made? I am beginning to be my own friend.' That's is progress indeed. Such a person will never be alone, and you may be sure he is a friend of all. (查看原文)
Every life without exceptions is a short one.
As it is with a play, so it is with life - what matters is not how long the acting lasts, but how good it is. (查看原文)
Time will bring us together again one of these days ; and when, as it will, the reunion comes, however short it may last, knowing how to make the most of it will turn it into a long one. (查看原文)
We must needs continuously study a thing if we are not in a position to test whether we know it. 'Rehearsal death.' To say this is to tell a person to rehearsal his freedom. A person who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. He is above, or at any rate beyond the reach of, all political powers. What are prisons, wardens, bars to him? He has an open door. (查看原文)
Why does no one admit his failing ? Because he’s still deep in them. It’s the person who’s awakened who recounts his dream, and acknowledging one’s failing is a sign of health. So let us rouse ourselves, so that we may be able to demonstrate our errors. But only philosophy will wake us; only philosophy will shake us out of that heavy sleep. (查看原文)
Greater power and greater value reside in that which creates(in this case God) than in the matter on which God works. Well, the place which in this universe is occupied by God is in man the place of the spirit. What matter is in the universe the body is in us. Let the worse, then, serve the better.
Let us meet with bravery whatever may befall us. Let us never fell a shudder at the thought of being wounded or of being made a prisoner, or of poverty or persecution.
What is death? Either a transition or an end. I am not afraid of coming to an end, this being the same as never having begun, nor of transition, for I shall never be in confinement quite so cramped anywhere else as l am here. (查看原文)
Do you think you are the only person to have had this experience? Are you really surprised, as if it were something unprecedented, that so long a tour and such diversity of scene have not enabled you to throw off this melancholy and this feeling of depression? A change of character, not a change of air, is what you need. Though you cross the boundless ocean, though, to use the words of our poet Virgil, lands and towns are left astern, whereever your destination you will be followed by your failings. Here is what Socrates said to someone who was making the same complaint: “How can you wonder your travels do you no good, when you carry yourself around with you? You are saddled with the very thing that drove you away.” How can novelty of surroundings abroad and becoming acquainted with foreig... (查看原文)
