Atharva31/Quotes_Collection · Datasets at Fast360

Unnamed: 0 int64 0 7.68k	quote stringlengths 1 3.91k	tags stringclasses 3 values
7,514	“We lose a significant portion of our lives attending ceremonies for people who have lost theirs.”	stoicism
7,515	“Rejection of desire is liberating. Renunciation is a form of power.”	stoicism
7,516	“What”	stoicism
7,517	“The modern expectation is that there will be equality in all things in the couple—which means, at heart, an equality of suffering. But calibrating grief to ensure an equal dosage is no easy task: misery is experienced subjectively, and there is always a temptation for each party to form a sincere yet competitive conviction that, in truth, his or her life really is more cursed--in ways that the partner seems uninclined to acknowledge or atone for. It takes a superhuman wisdom to avoid the consoling conclusion that one has the harder life.”	stoicism
7,518	“We can always choose not what we see but how we look at what we see.”	stoicism
7,519	“Like happiness, unhappiness usually springs from a comparison.”	stoicism
7,520	“Killing a person does not lead to nearly as much pain as creating a human being.”	stoicism
7,521	“We need not reply or even listen to people who are talking about—not to—us.”	stoicism
7,522	“Every habit and faculty is confirmed and strengthened by the corresponding actions, that of walking by walking, that of running by running. If you wish to be a good reader, read; if you wish to be a good writer, write. If you should give up reading for thirty days one after the other, and be engaged in something else, you will know what happens. So also if you lie in bed for ten days, get up and try to take a rather long walk, and you will see how wobbly your legs are. In general, therefore, if you want to do something, make a habit of it; if you want not to do something, refrain from doing it, and accustom yourself to something else instead.”	stoicism
7,523	“All that exists is the seed of what will emerge from it.”	stoicism
7,524	“We ought to be thankful not only for what we have but also for what we do not have.”	stoicism
7,525	“Even the worst that has ever happened to you could have been worse.”	stoicism
7,526	“The happiest people are not those who have the most, but those who are the most grateful for what they have.”	stoicism
7,527	“Meditation betters not only the mind but also the brain.”	stoicism
7,528	“An action is at least a billion times less difficult to choose than a reaction.”	stoicism
7,529	“The person you are mad at for being late could be dead.”	stoicism
7,530	“You cannot be blessed with the ability to be happy without being cursed with the ability to be unhappy.”	stoicism
7,531	“Some things are made way more appealing than they are by our lack of them.”	stoicism
7,532	“One man’s bad day is another man’s good night.”	stoicism
7,533	“Most people are like all stomachs: they cannot remain satisfied for a long time.”	stoicism
7,534	“Even most of those whose wealth was not inherited or won often lose sleep over losing their wealth.”	stoicism
7,535	“[W]hat cause can there be for complaint, after all, in anything that was always bound to come to an end fading gradually away? What is troubling about that? [...] Moving to one's end through nature's own gentle process of dissolution - is there a better way of leaving life than that? Not because there is anything wrong with a sudden, violent departure, but because this gradual withdrawal is an easy route.”	stoicism
7,536	“We have never tried to do most of the things we are dead sure we cannot do.”	stoicism
7,537	“We are more in control of how much we know than we are of how much we have.”	stoicism
7,538	“There is a correlation between how seriously we take life and the number of problems we have.”	stoicism
7,539	“Feeling sorry for our bodies ought to be the closest we get to feeling sorry for ourselves.”	stoicism
7,540	“A blind man’s thoughts almost never have anything to do with the things he is facing.”	stoicism
7,541	“As things are, there is about wisdom a nobility and magnificence in the fact that she didn't just fall to a person's lot, that each man owes her to his own efforts, that one doesn't go to anyone other than oneself to find her.”	stoicism
7,542	“The size of your problem is in your mind.”	stoicism
7,543	“Some of the things we fear exist nowhere but where fear happens.”	stoicism
7,544	“The present isn’t more capable of causing mental pain than the past or the future.”	stoicism
7,545	“It is impossible to trip and fall while walking slowly.”	stoicism
7,546	“Even the busiest bee does not move from one flower to another as often as an untamed mind moves from one thought to another.”	stoicism
7,547	“Life is yet to produce someone who is loved by or important to everyone.”	stoicism
7,548	“They who always expect the worst are almost always pleasantly surprised.”	stoicism
7,549	“It would be foolish to be stoical all the time, you'd wear yourself out for nothing”	stoicism
7,550	“The first principle of practical Stoicism is this: we don’t react to events; we react to our judgments about them, and the judgments are up to us.”	stoicism
7,551	“When you pursue wisdom, you will soon realize how much you don’t know. Your knowledge will be incomplete, but continually developing through your curiosity. Arrogance blocks new information from coming in. When you’re conceited, you’ll resist change, and struggle to preserve your fixed image. Don’t fall into smug idleness, used to comfort. Challenge what you think you know, not caring if other people see you as a fool. Progress daily in your own uncertainty.”	stoicism
7,552	“Expectation is the only seed of disappointment.”	stoicism
7,553	“After failure, it is possible to keep going– and to fail better.”	stoicism
7,554	“Just as I prepared to stand and bow, a woman appeared with a miniature coffee cup in her hand. She offered it to me. As I took it, I noticed two things: Bugs crawling on the ground and the men approving of me by snapping their fingers. I bowed and took a sip of the coffee and almost fainted. I had a cockroach on my tongue. I looked at the peoples' faces and I could not spit it out. My grandmother would have pushed away the grave's dirt and traveled by willpower to show me her face of abject disappointment. I could not bear that. I opened my throat and drank the cup dry. I counted four cockroaches.”	stoicism
7,555	“In the first place, sensation (aisthesis) is a corporeal process which we have in common with animals, and in which the impression of an exterior object is transmitted to the soul. By means of this process, an image (phantasia) of the object is produced in the soul, or more precisely in the guiding part (hegemonikon) of the soul”	stoicism
7,556	“You cannot continue to hate someone without repeatedly wasting, on them, some of your precious time and mental energy.”	stoicism
7,557	“It is way more pleasurable to master yourself than it is to masturbate.”	stoicism
7,558	“It takes courage to speak or react way slower than you think.”	stoicism
7,559	“Death is the release of an organism from the prison of life.”	stoicism
7,560	“Sometimes we have no luxury of choice. We must do certain things for survival. That should not stop us from doing the things we love.”	stoicism
7,561	“[M]aking noble resolutions is not as important as keeping the resolutions you have made already. (Letter XVI)”	stoicism
7,562	“Suffering adds spice to life.”	stoicism
7,563	“The fact that our minds are problem-solving machines says a lot about the nature of life.”	stoicism
7,564	“Being in a hurry does not slow down time.”	stoicism
7,565	“Suffering and happiness are not mutually exclusive.”	stoicism
7,566	“Life is a game we are all bound to lose.”	stoicism
7,567	“Most people have given back to life the power to make themselves happy.”	stoicism
7,568	“Enlightenment does not mean making the most of bad situations. It means knowing that every situation is neither good nor bad.”	stoicism
7,569	“Life takes from us only lives we were given by it.”	stoicism
7,570	“It is our natural and moral duty as consumers of other living things to someday die.”	stoicism
7,571	“At any given moment, it is a beautiful day in many parts of the world.”	stoicism
7,572	“Our inability to imagine the length of the rest of existence magnifies our problems.”	stoicism
7,573	“Judgments are the only possible cause of unhappiness and happiness.”	stoicism
7,574	“Within, the only place where it is created, is the very last place most pursuers of happiness are likely to go.”	stoicism
7,575	“The worst that can happen to anyone will happen to everyone.”	stoicism
7,576	“Not having expected an event makes it seem way better or worse than it really is.”	stoicism
7,577	“It is the human race, not the world, that desperately needs to be changed.”	stoicism
7,578	“Når det kommer til stykket, er jeg ikke sikker på om De har moralsk rett til å blande dem i saken. Dessuten tror jeg fremdeles ikke det er noen fare på ferde. Etter min mening er det absurd å gå fra konseptene fordi om noen mennesker har fått lyst til å skifte ham. Det får bli deres egen sak. Det står enhver fritt for.”	stoicism
7,579	“If I did compress what I know and think about the spanish civil war into 6 lines you wouldn't print it. You wouldn't have the guts.”	stoicism
7,580	“Soon, you will have forgotten everything. Soon, everybody will have forgotten you.”	stoicism
7,581	“You will never see me surrender, never see me cry, but you will often see me walk away. Turn around and just leave, without looking back.”	stoicism
7,582	“The willing are led by fate, the reluctant are dragged.”	stoicism
7,583	“Sometimes, even to live is an act of courage.”	stoicism
7,584	“Being a stoic does not mean being a robot. Being a stoic means remaining calm both at the height of pleasure and the depths of misery.”	stoicism
7,585	“At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself, "I have to go to work - as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I'm going to do what I was born for - the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?”	stoicism
7,586	“Everything worthwhile in your life draws its meaning from the fact you will die.”	stoicism
7,587	“Death devours not only those who have been cooked by old age; it also feasts on those who are half-cooked and even those who are raw.”	stoicism
7,588	“In the evening I came home and read about the Messina earthquake, and how the relief ships arrived, and the wretched survivors crowded down to the water's edge and tore each other like wild beasts in their rage of hunger. The paper set forth, in horrified language, that some of them had been seventy-two hours without food. I, as I read, had also been seventy-two hours without food; and the difference was simply that they thought they were starving.”	stoicism
7,589	“That which Fortune has not given, she cannot take away.”	stoicism
7,590	“You have the power to strip away many superfluous troubles located wholly in your judgement, and to possess a large room for yourself embracing in thought the whole cosmos, to consider everlasting time, to think of the rapid change in the parts of each thing, of how short it is from birth until dissolution, and how the void before birth and that after dissolution are equally infinite.”	stoicism
7,591	“We might never rid ourselves of a lingering anxiety regarding our death; this is a kind of tax we pay in return for self-awareness.”	stoicism
7,592	“Life is neither a glorious highlight reel nor a monstrous tragedy. Every day is a good day to live and a good day to die. Every day is also an apt time to learn and express joy and love for the entire natural world. Each day is an apt time to make contact with other people and express empathy for the entire world. Each day is perfect to accept with indifference all aspects of being.”	stoicism
7,593	“[I]ndulge the body just so far as suffices for good health. It needs to be treated somewhat strictly to prevent it from being disobedient to the spirit. Your food should appease your hunger, your drink quench your thirst, your clothing keep out the cold, your house be a protection against inclement weather.”	stoicism
7,594	“Yes, as my swift days near their goal, 'Tis all that I implore - In life and death, a chainless soul, With courage to endure.”	stoicism
7,595	“What would Heracles have been if he had said, "How am I to prevent a big lion from appearing, or a big boar, or brutal men?" What care you, I say? If a big boar appears, you will have a greater struggle to engage in; if evil men appear, you will free the world from evil men.”	stoicism
7,596	“When you are disturbed by events and lose your serenity, quickly return to yourself and don't stay upset longer than the experience lasts; for you'll have more mastery over your inner harmony by continually returning to it.”	stoicism
7,597	“You should, I need hardly say, live in such a way that there is nothing which you could not as easily tell your enemy as keep to yourself.”	stoicism
7,598	“When others inspire us, they tend to do so through the clear expression of these sketchy, adumbrated thoughts we ourselves have known but never had the perspicacity for formulate with certainty.”	stoicism
7,599	“Life is how you look at it.”	stoicism
7,600	“Each of us is impermanent wave of energy folded into the infinite cosmic order. Acknowledgement of the fundamental impermanence of ourselves unchains us from the strictures of living a terrestrial life stuck like a needle vacillating between the magnetic pull of endless desire and the terror of death. Once we achieve freedom from any craving and all desires and we are relieved of all titanic fears, we release ourselves from living in perpetual distress. Once we rid ourselves from any impulse to exist, we discover our true place in the universal order. The composition of our life filament is exactly right when we accept the notion of living and dying with equal stoicism.”	stoicism
7,601	“If you have assumed any character beyond your strength, you have both demeaned yourself ill in that and quitted one which you might have supported.”	stoicism
7,602	“The supreme ideal does not call for any external aids. It is homegrown, wholly self-developed. Once it starts looking outside itself for any part of itself it is on the way to being dominated by fortune.”	stoicism
7,603	“The man who looks for the morrow without worrying over it knows a peaceful independence and a happiness beyond all others. Whoever has said, "I have lived' receives a windfall every day he gets up in the morning.”	stoicism
7,604	“Show me a man who though sick is happy, who though in danger is happy, who though in prison is happy, and I'll show you a Stoic.”	stoicism
7,605	“Now this was possible only by a man determining himself entirely rationally according to concepts, not according to changing impressions and moods. But as only the maxims of our conduct, not the consequences or circumstances, are in our power, to be capable of always remaining consistent we must take as our object only the maxims, not the consequences and circumstances, and thus the doctrine of virtue is again introduced.” —from_The World as Will and Representation_. Translated from the German by E. F. J. Paye in two volumes: volume I, p. 89”	stoicism
7,606	“In conformity with this spirit and aim of the Stoa, Epictetus begins with it and constantly returns to it as the kernel of his philosophy, that we should bear in mind and distinguish what depends on us and what does not, and thus should not count on the latter at all. In this way we shall certainly remain free from all pain, suffering, and anxiety. Now what depends on us is the will alone, and here there gradually takes place a transition to a doctrine of virtue, since it is noticed that, as the external world that is independent of us determines good and bad fortune, so inner satisfaction or dissatisfaction with ourselves proceeds from the will. But later it was asked whether we should attribute the names bonum et malum to the two former or to the two latter. This was really arbitrary and a matter of choice, and made no difference. But yet the Stoics argued incessantly about this with the Peripatetics and Epicureans, and amused themselves with the inadmissible comparison of two wholly incommensurable quantities and with the contrary and paradoxical judgements arising therefrom, which they cast on one another. An interesting collection of these is afforded us from the Stoic side by the Paradoxa of Cicero." —from_The World as Will and Representation_. Translated from the German by E. F. J. Paye in two volumes: volume I, pp. 88-89”	stoicism
7,607	“Perhaps struggle is all we have because the god of history is an atheist, and nothing about his world is meant to be. So you must wake up every morning knowing that no promise is unbreakable, least of all the promises of waking up at all. This is not despair. These are the preferences of universe itself: verbs over nouns, actions over states, struggle over hope.”	stoicism
7,608	“They did this to me but I have remained who I am. I am tempered. I am able. Inside myself there's an untouched man. If they came back now, and did everything to me again, they would never reach the untouched man. I've passed the exam I've been shirking all my life. I'm a graduate of pain.”	stoicism
7,609	“The Sage desires only one thing, virtue, and he is cautious about only one thing, vice. He is the same in every circumstance because what is most important lies within him, and not with external events, which are constantly changing.”	stoicism
7,610	“What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.”	stoicism
7,611	“Some of the best things that have ever happened to us wouldn’t have happened to us, if it weren’t for some of the worst things that have ever happened to us.”	stoicism
7,612	“But is life really worth so much? Let us examine this; it's a different inquiry. We will offer no solace for so desolate a prison house; we will encourage no one to endure the overlordship of butchers. We shall rather show that in every kind of slavery, the road of freedom lies open. I will say to the man to whom it befell to have a king shoot arrows at his dear ones [Prexaspes], and to him whose master makes fathers banquet on their sons' guts [Harpagus]: 'What are you groaning for, fool?... Everywhere you look you find an end to your sufferings. You see that steep drop-off? It leads down to freedom. You see that ocean, that river, that well? Freedom lies at its bottom. You see that short, shriveled, bare tree? Freedom hangs from it.... You ask, what is the path to freedom? Any vein in your body.”	stoicism
7,613	“Sick and yet happy, in peril and yet happy, dying and yet happy, in exile and happy, in disgrace and happy.”	stoicism

7,514

“We lose a significant portion of our lives attending ceremonies for people who have lost theirs.”

stoicism

7,515

“Rejection of desire is liberating. Renunciation is a form of power.”

stoicism

7,516

“What”

stoicism

7,517

“The modern expectation is that there will be equality in all things in the couple—which means, at heart, an equality of suffering. But calibrating grief to ensure an equal dosage is no easy task: misery is experienced subjectively, and there is always a temptation for each party to form a sincere yet competitive conviction that, in truth, his or her life really is more cursed--in ways that the partner seems uninclined to acknowledge or atone for. It takes a superhuman wisdom to avoid the consoling conclusion that one has the harder life.”

stoicism

7,518

“We can always choose not what we see but how we look at what we see.”

stoicism

7,519

“Like happiness, unhappiness usually springs from a comparison.”

stoicism

7,520

“Killing a person does not lead to nearly as much pain as creating a human being.”

stoicism

7,521

“We need not reply or even listen to people who are talking about—not to—us.”

stoicism

7,522

“Every habit and faculty is confirmed and strengthened by the corresponding actions, that of walking by walking, that of running by running. If you wish to be a good reader, read; if you wish to be a good writer, write. If you should give up reading for thirty days one after the other, and be engaged in something else, you will know what happens. So also if you lie in bed for ten days, get up and try to take a rather long walk, and you will see how wobbly your legs are. In general, therefore, if you want to do something, make a habit of it; if you want not to do something, refrain from doing it, and accustom yourself to something else instead.”

stoicism

7,523

“All that exists is the seed of what will emerge from it.”

stoicism

7,524

“We ought to be thankful not only for what we have but also for what we do not have.”

stoicism

7,525

“Even the worst that has ever happened to you could have been worse.”

stoicism

7,526

“The happiest people are not those who have the most, but those who are the most grateful for what they have.”

stoicism

7,527

“Meditation betters not only the mind but also the brain.”

stoicism

7,528

“An action is at least a billion times less difficult to choose than a reaction.”

stoicism

7,529

“The person you are mad at for being late could be dead.”

stoicism

7,530

“You cannot be blessed with the ability to be happy without being cursed with the ability to be unhappy.”

stoicism

7,531

“Some things are made way more appealing than they are by our lack of them.”

stoicism

7,532

“One man’s bad day is another man’s good night.”

stoicism

7,533

“Most people are like all stomachs: they cannot remain satisfied for a long time.”

stoicism

7,534

“Even most of those whose wealth was not inherited or won often lose sleep over losing their wealth.”

stoicism

7,535

“[W]hat cause can there be for complaint, after all, in anything that was always bound to come to an end fading gradually away? What is troubling about that? [...] Moving to one's end through nature's own gentle process of dissolution - is there a better way of leaving life than that? Not because there is anything wrong with a sudden, violent departure, but because this gradual withdrawal is an easy route.”

stoicism

7,536

“We have never tried to do most of the things we are dead sure we cannot do.”

stoicism

7,537

“We are more in control of how much we know than we are of how much we have.”

stoicism

7,538

“There is a correlation between how seriously we take life and the number of problems we have.”

stoicism

7,539

“Feeling sorry for our bodies ought to be the closest we get to feeling sorry for ourselves.”

stoicism

7,540

“A blind man’s thoughts almost never have anything to do with the things he is facing.”

stoicism

7,541

“As things are, there is about wisdom a nobility and magnificence in the fact that she didn't just fall to a person's lot, that each man owes her to his own efforts, that one doesn't go to anyone other than oneself to find her.”

stoicism

7,542

“The size of your problem is in your mind.”

stoicism

7,543

“Some of the things we fear exist nowhere but where fear happens.”

stoicism

7,544

“The present isn’t more capable of causing mental pain than the past or the future.”

stoicism

7,545

“It is impossible to trip and fall while walking slowly.”

stoicism

7,546

“Even the busiest bee does not move from one flower to another as often as an untamed mind moves from one thought to another.”

stoicism

7,547

“Life is yet to produce someone who is loved by or important to everyone.”

stoicism

7,548

“They who always expect the worst are almost always pleasantly surprised.”

stoicism

7,549

“It would be foolish to be stoical all the time, you'd wear yourself out for nothing”

stoicism

7,550

“The first principle of practical Stoicism is this: we don’t react to events; we react to our judgments about them, and the judgments are up to us.”

stoicism

7,551

“When you pursue wisdom, you will soon realize how much you don’t know. Your knowledge will be incomplete, but continually developing through your curiosity. Arrogance blocks new information from coming in. When you’re conceited, you’ll resist change, and struggle to preserve your fixed image. Don’t fall into smug idleness, used to comfort. Challenge what you think you know, not caring if other people see you as a fool. Progress daily in your own uncertainty.”

stoicism

7,552

“Expectation is the only seed of disappointment.”

stoicism

7,553

“After failure, it is possible to keep going– and to fail better.”

stoicism

7,554

“Just as I prepared to stand and bow, a woman appeared with a miniature coffee cup in her hand. She offered it to me. As I took it, I noticed two things: Bugs crawling on the ground and the men approving of me by snapping their fingers. I bowed and took a sip of the coffee and almost fainted. I had a cockroach on my tongue. I looked at the peoples' faces and I could not spit it out. My grandmother would have pushed away the grave's dirt and traveled by willpower to show me her face of abject disappointment. I could not bear that. I opened my throat and drank the cup dry. I counted four cockroaches.”

stoicism

7,555

“In the first place, sensation (aisthesis) is a corporeal process which we have in common with animals, and in which the impression of an exterior object is transmitted to the soul. By means of this process, an image (phantasia) of the object is produced in the soul, or more precisely in the guiding part (hegemonikon) of the soul”

stoicism

7,556

“You cannot continue to hate someone without repeatedly wasting, on them, some of your precious time and mental energy.”

stoicism

7,557

“It is way more pleasurable to master yourself than it is to masturbate.”

stoicism

7,558

“It takes courage to speak or react way slower than you think.”

stoicism

7,559

“Death is the release of an organism from the prison of life.”

stoicism

7,560

“Sometimes we have no luxury of choice. We must do certain things for survival. That should not stop us from doing the things we love.”

stoicism

7,561

“[M]aking noble resolutions is not as important as keeping the resolutions you have made already. (Letter XVI)”

stoicism

7,562

“Suffering adds spice to life.”

stoicism

7,563

“The fact that our minds are problem-solving machines says a lot about the nature of life.”

stoicism

7,564

“Being in a hurry does not slow down time.”

stoicism

7,565

“Suffering and happiness are not mutually exclusive.”

stoicism

7,566

“Life is a game we are all bound to lose.”

stoicism

7,567

“Most people have given back to life the power to make themselves happy.”

stoicism

7,568

“Enlightenment does not mean making the most of bad situations. It means knowing that every situation is neither good nor bad.”

stoicism

7,569

“Life takes from us only lives we were given by it.”

stoicism

7,570

“It is our natural and moral duty as consumers of other living things to someday die.”

stoicism

7,571

“At any given moment, it is a beautiful day in many parts of the world.”

stoicism

7,572

“Our inability to imagine the length of the rest of existence magnifies our problems.”

stoicism

7,573

“Judgments are the only possible cause of unhappiness and happiness.”

stoicism

7,574

“Within, the only place where it is created, is the very last place most pursuers of happiness are likely to go.”

stoicism

7,575

“The worst that can happen to anyone will happen to everyone.”

stoicism

7,576

“Not having expected an event makes it seem way better or worse than it really is.”

stoicism

7,577

“It is the human race, not the world, that desperately needs to be changed.”

stoicism

7,578

“Når det kommer til stykket, er jeg ikke sikker på om De har moralsk rett til å blande dem i saken. Dessuten tror jeg fremdeles ikke det er noen fare på ferde. Etter min mening er det absurd å gå fra konseptene fordi om noen mennesker har fått lyst til å skifte ham. Det får bli deres egen sak. Det står enhver fritt for.”

stoicism

7,579

“If I did compress what I know and think about the spanish civil war into 6 lines you wouldn't print it. You wouldn't have the guts.”

stoicism

7,580

“Soon, you will have forgotten everything. Soon, everybody will have forgotten you.”

stoicism

7,581

“You will never see me surrender, never see me cry, but you will often see me walk away. Turn around and just leave, without looking back.”

stoicism

7,582

“The willing are led by fate, the reluctant are dragged.”

stoicism

7,583

“Sometimes, even to live is an act of courage.”

stoicism

7,584

“Being a stoic does not mean being a robot. Being a stoic means remaining calm both at the height of pleasure and the depths of misery.”

stoicism

7,585

“At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself, "I have to go to work - as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I'm going to do what I was born for - the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?”

stoicism

7,586

“Everything worthwhile in your life draws its meaning from the fact you will die.”

stoicism

7,587

“Death devours not only those who have been cooked by old age; it also feasts on those who are half-cooked and even those who are raw.”

stoicism

7,588

“In the evening I came home and read about the Messina earthquake, and how the relief ships arrived, and the wretched survivors crowded down to the water's edge and tore each other like wild beasts in their rage of hunger. The paper set forth, in horrified language, that some of them had been seventy-two hours without food. I, as I read, had also been seventy-two hours without food; and the difference was simply that they thought they were starving.”

stoicism

7,589

“That which Fortune has not given, she cannot take away.”

stoicism

7,590

“You have the power to strip away many superfluous troubles located wholly in your judgement, and to possess a large room for yourself embracing in thought the whole cosmos, to consider everlasting time, to think of the rapid change in the parts of each thing, of how short it is from birth until dissolution, and how the void before birth and that after dissolution are equally infinite.”

stoicism

7,591

“We might never rid ourselves of a lingering anxiety regarding our death; this is a kind of tax we pay in return for self-awareness.”

stoicism

7,592

“Life is neither a glorious highlight reel nor a monstrous tragedy. Every day is a good day to live and a good day to die. Every day is also an apt time to learn and express joy and love for the entire natural world. Each day is an apt time to make contact with other people and express empathy for the entire world. Each day is perfect to accept with indifference all aspects of being.”

stoicism

7,593

“[I]ndulge the body just so far as suffices for good health. It needs to be treated somewhat strictly to prevent it from being disobedient to the spirit. Your food should appease your hunger, your drink quench your thirst, your clothing keep out the cold, your house be a protection against inclement weather.”

stoicism

7,594

“Yes, as my swift days near their goal, 'Tis all that I implore - In life and death, a chainless soul, With courage to endure.”

stoicism

7,595

“What would Heracles have been if he had said, "How am I to prevent a big lion from appearing, or a big boar, or brutal men?" What care you, I say? If a big boar appears, you will have a greater struggle to engage in; if evil men appear, you will free the world from evil men.”

stoicism

7,596

“When you are disturbed by events and lose your serenity, quickly return to yourself and don't stay upset longer than the experience lasts; for you'll have more mastery over your inner harmony by continually returning to it.”

stoicism

7,597

“You should, I need hardly say, live in such a way that there is nothing which you could not as easily tell your enemy as keep to yourself.”

stoicism

7,598

“When others inspire us, they tend to do so through the clear expression of these sketchy, adumbrated thoughts we ourselves have known but never had the perspicacity for formulate with certainty.”

stoicism

7,599

“Life is how you look at it.”

stoicism

7,600

“Each of us is impermanent wave of energy folded into the infinite cosmic order. Acknowledgement of the fundamental impermanence of ourselves unchains us from the strictures of living a terrestrial life stuck like a needle vacillating between the magnetic pull of endless desire and the terror of death. Once we achieve freedom from any craving and all desires and we are relieved of all titanic fears, we release ourselves from living in perpetual distress. Once we rid ourselves from any impulse to exist, we discover our true place in the universal order. The composition of our life filament is exactly right when we accept the notion of living and dying with equal stoicism.”

stoicism

7,601

“If you have assumed any character beyond your strength, you have both demeaned yourself ill in that and quitted one which you might have supported.”

stoicism

7,602

“The supreme ideal does not call for any external aids. It is homegrown, wholly self-developed. Once it starts looking outside itself for any part of itself it is on the way to being dominated by fortune.”

stoicism

7,603

“The man who looks for the morrow without worrying over it knows a peaceful independence and a happiness beyond all others. Whoever has said, "I have lived' receives a windfall every day he gets up in the morning.”

stoicism

7,604

“Show me a man who though sick is happy, who though in danger is happy, who though in prison is happy, and I'll show you a Stoic.”

stoicism

7,605

“Now this was possible only by a man determining himself entirely *rationally* according to concepts, not according to changing impressions and moods. But as only the maxims of our conduct, not the consequences or circumstances, are in our power, to be capable of always remaining consistent we must take as our object only the maxims, not the consequences and circumstances, and thus the doctrine of virtue is again introduced.” —from_The World as Will and Representation_. Translated from the German by E. F. J. Paye in two volumes: volume I, p. 89”

stoicism

7,606

“In conformity with this spirit and aim of the Stoa, Epictetus begins with it and constantly returns to it as the kernel of his philosophy, that we should bear in mind and distinguish what depends on us and what does not, and thus should not count on the latter at all. In this way we shall certainly remain free from all pain, suffering, and anxiety. Now what depends on us is the will alone, and here there gradually takes place a transition to a doctrine of virtue, since it is noticed that, as the external world that is independent of us determines good and bad fortune, so inner satisfaction or dissatisfaction with ourselves proceeds from the will. But later it was asked whether we should attribute the names *bonum et malum* to the two former or to the two latter. This was really arbitrary and a matter of choice, and made no difference. But yet the Stoics argued incessantly about this with the Peripatetics and Epicureans, and amused themselves with the inadmissible comparison of two wholly incommensurable quantities and with the contrary and paradoxical judgements arising therefrom, which they cast on one another. An interesting collection of these is afforded us from the Stoic side by the *Paradoxa* of Cicero." —from_The World as Will and Representation_. Translated from the German by E. F. J. Paye in two volumes: volume I, pp. 88-89”

stoicism

7,607

“Perhaps struggle is all we have because the god of history is an atheist, and nothing about his world is meant to be. So you must wake up every morning knowing that no promise is unbreakable, least of all the promises of waking up at all. This is not despair. These are the preferences of universe itself: verbs over nouns, actions over states, struggle over hope.”

stoicism

7,608

“They did this to me but I have remained who I am. I am tempered. I am able. Inside myself there's an untouched man. If they came back now, and did everything to me again, they would never reach the untouched man. I've passed the exam I've been shirking all my life. I'm a graduate of pain.”

stoicism

7,609

“The Sage desires only one thing, virtue, and he is cautious about only one thing, vice. He is the same in every circumstance because what is most important lies within him, and not with external events, which are constantly changing.”

stoicism

7,610

“What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.”

stoicism

7,611

“Some of the best things that have ever happened to us wouldn’t have happened to us, if it weren’t for some of the worst things that have ever happened to us.”

stoicism

7,612

“But is life really worth so much? Let us examine this; it's a different inquiry. We will offer no solace for so desolate a prison house; we will encourage no one to endure the overlordship of butchers. We shall rather show that in every kind of slavery, the road of freedom lies open. I will say to the man to whom it befell to have a king shoot arrows at his dear ones [Prexaspes], and to him whose master makes fathers banquet on their sons' guts [Harpagus]: 'What are you groaning for, fool?... Everywhere you look you find an end to your sufferings. You see that steep drop-off? It leads down to freedom. You see that ocean, that river, that well? Freedom lies at its bottom. You see that short, shriveled, bare tree? Freedom hangs from it.... You ask, what is the path to freedom? Any vein in your body.”

stoicism

7,613

“Sick and yet happy, in peril and yet happy, dying and yet happy, in exile and happy, in disgrace and happy.”

stoicism