More on this book
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“life is short, art is long.”
The problem, Paulinus, is not that we have a short life, but that we waste time. Life is long and there is enough of it for satisfying personal accomplishments if we use our hours well.
Thus the time we are given is not brief, but we make it so. We do not lack time; on the contrary, there is so much of it that we waste an awful lot.
Those who choose to have no real purpose in life are ever rootless and dissatisfied, tossed by their aimlessness into ever-changing situations. A man who opts to live a life with no principles to steer by usually gets a big surprise from Fate while he is sitting back and yawning. As the man says, “The amount of life we truly live is small. For our existence on Earth is not Life, but merely Time.”
How can anyone complain that no one will give them time when they allot no time for themselves?
No one can be found who wants to give away his money, but among how many does each one of us give away his life?
You possess a fear that is all too human but have the boundless desires of a god.
Are you not ashamed to save for yourself only the last part of your life, and to set aside for knowledge only that time which can’t be spent on making money?
It is too late to begin living life just as it is ending! What stubborn denial of mortality to delay dreams to after your fiftieth and sixtieth year, and to plan on starting your life at a point that not everyone gets to.
But why complain? Such pointless railing changed neither themselves nor anyone else.
But those who are ruled by the delights of the stomach and groin bear a stain of dishonor.
Finally, it is universally acknowledged that no single worthwhile goal can be successfully pursued by a man who is occupied with many tasks – lawyer, teacher, whomever - because the mind, when its focus is split, absorbs little in depth and rejects everything that is, so to speak, jammed into it.
The busy man is busy with everything except living; there is nothing that is more difficult to learn how to do right.
Of course you have no life! All those people you thrive on take it from you!
A grey-haired wrinkled man has not necessarily lived long. More accurately, he has existed long.
Observe how these same people with nothing but time on their hands run in haste to the doctor if they get sick and the threat of death suddenly appears on the horizon. See how ready they are, when facing death, to sell all they own in order to keep living! Such is the paradox of human nature.
The greatest obstacle to living a full life is having expectations, delaying gratification based on what might happen tomorrow which squanders today.
The sunniest day in a miserable mortal’s life Is always the first to fly.
Life is divided into three parts: what was, what is and what shall be. Of these three periods, the present is short, the future is doubtful and the past alone is certain.
Oxen are more appropriate for the hauling of heavy loads than thoroughbred horses. Who puts a cart behind a race-horse?
Often it is better to hide an illness from the patient, because just the mere awareness of a disease can bring about death.
One has to leave the ground in order to see the whole world.
the more people do a thing the worse it is likely to be. Let us therefore inquire, not what is most commonly done, but what is best for us to do, and what will establish us in the possession of undying happiness, not what is approved of by the vulgar, the worst possible exponents of truth.
The happy man, therefore, is he who can make a right judgment in all things: he is happy who in his present circumstances, whatever they may be, is satisfied and on friendly terms with the conditions of his life. That man is happy, whose reason recommends to him the whole posture of his affairs.
As in a tilled-field, when ploughed for corn, some flowers are found amongst it, and yet, though these posies may charm the eye, all this labour was not spent in order to produce them
I do not say that he does not feel them, but he conquers them, and on occasion calmly and tranquilly rises superior to their attacks, holding all misfortunes to be trials of his own firmness.
Is there any hard-working man to whom idleness is not a punishment?
they can only prove how great and how mighty it is by proving how much they can endure.
"Let them," says He, "be exercised by labours, sufferings, and losses, that so they may gather true strength."
Men are raised to the level of the gods by a death which is admired even by those who fear them.
I may say the same of a good man, if troublesome circumstances have never given him a single opportunity of displaying the strength of his mind. I think you unhappy because you never have been unhappy: you have passed through your life without meeting an antagonist: no one will know your powers, not even you yourself. For a man cannot know himself without a trial; no one ever learnt what he could do without putting himself to the test; for which reason many have of their own free will exposed themselves to misfortunes which no longer came in their way, and have sought for an opportunity of
...more
you can judge of a pilot in a storm, of a soldier in a battle.
Fortune lashes and mangles us: well, let us endure it: it is not cruelty, it is a struggle, in which the oftener we engage the braver we shall become. The strongest part of the body is that which is exercised by the most frequent use: we must entrust ourselves to fortune to be hardened by her against herself: by degrees she will make us a match for herself. Familiarity with danger leads us to despise it. Thus the bodies of sailors are hardened by endurance of the sea, and the hands of farmers by work; the arms of soldiers are powerful to hurl darts, the legs of runners are active: that part of
...more
No tree which the wind does not often blow against is firm and strong; for it is stiffened by the very act of being shaken, and plants its roots more securely: those which grow in a sheltered valley are brittle: and so it is to the advantage of good men, and causes them to be undismayed, that they should live much amidst alarms, and learn to bear with patience what is not evil save to him who endures it ill.
Fire tries gold, misfortune tries brave men.
Despise poverty; no man lives as poor as he was born: despise pain; either it will cease or you will cease: despise death; it either ends you or takes you elsewhere: despise fortune; I have given her no weapon that can reach the mind. Above all, I have taken care that no one should hold you captive against your will: the way of escape lies open before you: if you do not choose to fight, you may fly. For this reason, of all those matters which I have deemed essential for you, I have made nothing easier for you than to die. I have set man's life as it were on a mountain side: it soon slips down.
but who is grieved at the loss of what is not his own?
yet that no siege engines can be discovered which can shake a well-established mind.
Moreover, that which hurts must be stronger than that which is hurt. Now wickedness is not stronger than virtue; therefore the wise man cannot be hurt.
The best plan is to reject straightway the first incentives to anger, to resist its very beginnings, and to take care not to be betrayed into it: for if once it begins to carry us away, it is hard to get back again into a healthy condition, because reason goes for nothing when once passion has been admitted to the mind, and has by our own free will been given a certain authority, it will for the future do as much as it chooses, not only as much as you will allow it.
Finally, I ask, is anger stronger or weaker than reason? If stronger, how can reason impose any check upon it, since it is only the less powerful that obey: if weaker, then reason is competent to effect its ends without anger, and does not need the help of a less powerful quality.
do not strike when anger bids them, but when opportunity invites them.
Whenever a controversy seems likely to be longer or more keenly disputed than usual, let us check its first beginnings, before it gathers strength. A dispute nourishes itself as it proceeds, and takes hold of those who plunge too deeply into it: it is easier to stand aloof than to extricate oneself from a struggle.
the best treatment in the first stage of illness is rest.
solitude will cure us when we are sick of crowds, and crowds will cure us when we are sick of solitude.
for it is a mistake to suppose that the king can be safe in a state where nothing is safe from the king:
Many executions are as disgraceful to a sovereign as many funerals are to a physician: one who governs less strictly is better obeyed.
