A Kind, Forgiving, Charitable, Pleasant Time

… I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round – apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that – as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.

Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

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A Good Company

My idea of good company is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.

– Jane Austin, Persuasion

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The Chain That Links Heaven and Earth

Doctors keep their scalpels and other instrument handy, for emergency. Keep your philosophy ready too – to understand heaven and earth. In everything you do , even the smallest thing, remember the chain that links them. Nothing earthy succeeds by ignoring heaven, nothing heavenly by ignoring the earth.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

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Singularity

…and it is singularity which often makes the worst part of our suffering, as it always does of our conduct.

Jane Austin, Persuasion

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In Harmony With Nature, Always.

Do not ever forget this things:

The nature of the world.

My nature.

How I relate to the world.

What proportion of it I make up.

That you are part of nature, and no one can prevent you from speaking and acting in harmony with it, always.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, II.9.

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If You Can Manage This…

Concentrate every minute like a Roman – like a man – on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness , tenderly , willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can – if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centred, irritable. You see how few things you have to do to live satisfying and reverent life? If you can manage this, that’s all even the gods can ask of you.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, II.5.

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