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“To have blessings and to prize them is to be in Heaven; to have them and not to prize them is to be in Hell. . . . To prize them and not to have them is to be in Hell.”
More does nothing for the one who feels less than, who cannot see the wealth that was given to them at birth,
No anxiety. No creeping, painful hope that this would finally be the thing that would make them feel whole, that would give them what they had always been lacking.
“As long as this exists,” Anne thought to herself, “this sunshine and this cloudless sky, and as long as I can enjoy it, how can I be sad?”
the philosopher must cultivate the poet’s eye—the ability to see beauty everywhere, even in the banal or the terrible.
shinrin yoku—forest bathing—which
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself. —ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
To the Stoics, their higher power was the logos—the path of the universe.
Living in fear, he said, is incongruent with ataraxia.
There is no stillness to the mind that thinks of nothing but itself, nor will there ever be peace for the body and spirit that follow their every urge and value nothing but themselves.
Why is that? Because the nihilist is forced to wrestle with the immense complexity and difficulty and potential emptiness of life (and death) with nothing but their own mind. This is a comically unfair mismatch.
There is no enjoying the possession of anything valuable unless one has someone to share it with. —SENECA
A house without family is no home.
A good relationship requires us to be virtuous, faithful, present, empathetic, generous, open, and willing to be a part of a larger whole. It requires, in order to create growth, real surrender.
We all need someone who understands us better than we understand ourselves, if only to keep us honest.
Fyodor Dostoevsky once described his wife, Anna, as a rock on which he could lean and rest, a wall that would not let him fall and protected him from the cold.
We learn when we give it. We learn when we get it. We get closer to stillness through it.
By ourselves, something is missing, and, worse, we feel that in our bones.
Which is why stillness requires other people; indeed, it is for other people.
“Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.”
we find that great leaders are fueled by love. Country. Compassion. Destiny. Reconciliation. Mastery. Idealism. Family.
The reward for becoming world-class should not be that you are a walking open wound, a trigger that’s pulled a thousand times a day.
an inner dignity and propriety that protects them and their loved ones from dangerous passions.
agape.
mitfreude, the active wishing of goodwill
schadenfreude, the active wishing of ill will.
Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner. To understand all is to forgive all. To love all is to be at peace with all, including yourself.
Take something you care about deeply, a possession you cherish, a person you love, or an experience that means a lot to you. Now take that feeling, that radiating warmth that comes up when you think about it, and consider how every single person, even murderers on death row, even the jerk who just shoved you in the supermarket, has that same feeling about something in their lives. Together, you share that. Not only do you share it, but you share it with everyone who has ever lived. It connects you to Cleopatra and Napoleon and Frederick Douglass.
Finding the universal in the personal, and the personal in the universal,
Peace is what allows us to take joy in the success of others and to let them take joy in our own. Peace is what motivates a person to be good, to treat every other living thing well,
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
“suppose that the soul is at peace when the body is still.” Vice versa. Lao Tzu said that “movement is the foundation of stillness.”
We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. —HENRY DAVID THOREAU
“Conservation of energy. Never stand up when you can sit down, and never sit down when you can lie down.”
“To be really happy and really safe, one ought to have at least two or three hobbies, and they must all be real.”
Painting, like all good hobbies, taught the practitioner to be present.
The journey has been enjoyable and well worth making—once!
Epicurus once said that the wise will accomplish three things in their life: leave written works behind them, be financially prudent and provide for the future, and cherish country living.
• Rise above our physical limitations. • Find hobbies that rest and replenish us. • Develop a reliable, disciplined routine. • Spend time getting active outdoors. • Seek out solitude and perspective. • Learn to sit—to do nothing when called for. • Get enough sleep and rein in our workaholism. • Commit to causes bigger than ourselves.
Somebody who thinks they’re nothing and don’t matter because they’re not doing something for even a few days is depriving themselves of stillness,
If they can’t learn the art of wu wei in their professions, they won’t succeed.
Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness;
Know’st thou the joys of pensive thought? Joys of the free and lonesome heart, the tender, gloomy heart? Joys of the solitary walk, the spirit bow’d yet proud, the suffering and the struggle?
Get lost. Be unreachable. Go slowly.
“If it were superstition, why would I keep doing the same thing over and over whether I win or lose? It’s a way of placing myself in a match, ordering my surroundings to match the order I seek in my head.”
For property is poverty and fear; only to have possessed something and to have let go of it means carefree ownership. —RAINER MARIA RILKE
The gentleman makes things his servants. The petty man is servant to things.
We don’t need to get rid of all our possessions, but we should constantly question what we own, why we own it, and whether we could do without.
The person who is afraid to lose their stuff, who has their identity wrapped up in their things, gives their enemies an opening. They make themselves extra vulnerable to fate.
our mind begins to lie to us. You need this. Be anxious that you might lose it. Protect it. Don’t share.
