You can live life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations.
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.
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.
The Banquet Of Life
Continue reading “The Banquet Of Life”Remember to conduct yourself as if at banquet. As something being passed around to you , reach out your hand and take a moderate helping. Does it pass you by?
The Training of a Wise and Good Person
Continue reading “The Training of a Wise and Good Person”There are three areas in which the person who would be wise and good must be trained.
The Only Path to Happiness
Keep this thought a the ready at daybreak, and through the day and night – there is only one path to happiness, and that is in giving up all outside of our sphere of choice , regarding nothing else as your possession, surrendering all else to God and Fortune.
Epictetus, Discourses, 4.4.39
Prayer of Good Humor
Grant me, O Lord, good digestion, and also something to digest.
Grant me a healthy body, and the necessary good humor to maintain it.
Grant me a simple soul that knows to treasure all that is good
and that doesn’t frighten easily at the sight of evil,
but rather finds the means to put things back in their place.
Give me a soul that knows not boredom, grumblings, sighs and laments,
nor excess of stress, because of that obstructing thing called “I.”
Grant me, O Lord, a sense of good humor.
Allow me the grace to be able to take a joke to discover in life a bit of joy,
and to be able to share it with others.
Saint Thomas More (1478-1535)
The Line Separating Good And Evil
Continue reading “The Line Separating Good And Evil”Gradually, it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, not between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart – and through all human hearts.
Life, Death, and Philosophy
Continue reading “Life, Death, and Philosophy”The time of a man’s life is as a point; the substance of it ever flowing, the sense obscure; and the whole composition of the body tending to corruption. His soul is restless, fortune uncertain, and fame doubtful; to be brief, as a stream so are all things belonging to the body; as a dream, or as a smoke, so are all that belong unto the soul. Our life is a warfare, and a mere pilgrimage. Fame after life is no better than oblivion. What is it then that will adhere and follow?
Control and Choice
Continue reading “Control and Choice”The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own…
Thinker's Notes 