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Does the sun try to do the rain’s work?
Ambition means tying your well-being to what other people say or do. Self-indulgence means tying it to the things that happen to you. Sanity means tying it to your own actions.
Things can’t shape our decisions by themselves.
Practice really hearing what people say. Do your best to get inside their minds.
What injures the hive injur...
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our own worth is measured by what we devote our energy to.
Don’t be ashamed to need help.
Straight, not straightened.
No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be good.
To feel affection for people even when they make mistakes is uniquely human. You can do it, if you simply recognize: that they’re human too,
When people injure you, ask yourself what good or harm they thought would come of it. If you understand that, you’ll feel sympathy rather than outrage or anger.
Everywhere, at each moment, you have the option: to accept this event with humility to treat this person as he should be treated
to approach this thought with care, so that nothing irrational creeps in.
the main thing we were made for is to work with others.
RTO?
Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what’s left and live it properly.
pain is neither unbearable nor unending,
Take care that you don’t treat inhumanity as it treats human beings.
It’s quite possible to be a good man without anyone realizing it. Remember that.
you don’t need much to live happily.
just because you’ve abandoned your hopes of becoming a great thinker or scientist, don’t give up on attaining freedom, a...
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It’s silly to try to escape other people’s faults. They are inescapable. Just try to escape your own.
When you have trouble getting out of bed in the morning, remember that your defining characteristic—what defines a human being—is to work with others.
Remember that to change your mind and to accept correction are free acts too. The action is yours, based on your own will, your own decision—and your own mind.
Stick to what’s in front of you—idea, action, utterance.
To accept it without arrogance, to let it go with indifference.
Stop perceiving the pain you imagine and you’ll remain completely unaffected.
Give yourself a gift: the present moment.
The mind without passions is a fortress.
People exist for one another.
Don’t look down on death, but welcome it.
Leave other people’s mistakes where they lie.
be satisfied with what you have, and accept the present—all of it.
If they’ve made a mistake, correct them gently and show them where they went wrong.
stop talking about what the good man is like, and just be one.
No role is so well suited to philosophy as the one you happen to be in right now.
we came into the world for the sake of one another.
That if they’re right to do this, then you have no right to complain. And if they aren’t, then they do it involuntarily, out of ignorance.
you’ve made enough mistakes yourself.
That you don’t know for sure it is a mistake. A lot of things are means to some other end. You have to know an awful lot before you can judge other people’s actions
When you lose your temper, or even feel irritated: that human life is very short.
That it’s not what they do that bothers us: that’s a problem for their minds, not ours. It’s our own misperceptions. Discard them.
How much more damage anger and grief do than the things that cause them.
That kindness is invincible, provided it’s sincere—not ironic or an act.
That to expect bad people not to injure others is crazy. It’s to ask the impossible. And to let them behave like that to other people but expect them to exempt you is arrogant—the act of a tyrant.
“If you don’t have a consistent goal in life, you can’t live it in a consistent way.”
Justice: so that you’ll speak the truth, frankly and without evasions, and act as you should—and as other people deserve.
if it isn’t ceasing to live that you’re afraid of but never beginning to live properly … then you’ll be worthy of the world that made you.
concentrate on living what can be lived (which means the present) … then you can spend the time you have left in tranquillity. And in kindness. And at peace with the spirit within you.
we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.
Practice even what seems impossible.
