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I listened to the silence, and all the words within.
Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not a truth.’”
Marcus Aurelius, ad 121 – 180, author of the Meditations. Quoth said emperor: It is not death a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live. And also: You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realise this, and you will find strength.
A man came up to me said, “You don’t seem happy.” “I’m not sure I enjoy watching money being squandered.” “It’s just money,” he replied. “It’s just paper.” “It’s time,” I said, sharper than I’d meant. “It’s the means to purchase time. It’s the cost of a new bed in a hospital, a solar panel on a roof; it’s a year’s salary for a tailor in Dhaka, it’s the price of a fishing boat, the cost of an education, it’s not money. It’s what it could have been.”
History is full of vile acts and strange consequence.
“We’ll go no more a-roving,”
fine. A moment, a temptation. The Stasi
There is nothing human ingenuity cannot make which human ingenuity cannot break.
“Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”
Remember or forget, each has its cruelties.
“Loneliness is no more than a construction of ideas. I am lonely because I am not with people. I need to be with people to feel fulfilled. And in time you say: I am not with people, and yet I am fulfilled. I have my books, I have my walks, I have my routines, I have my thoughts, and though I am alone, I am not lonely. And in time you say: I have myself, my body and my mind, and people would intrude upon that, and I am lonely, and it is for the very, very best. It is a paradise.
