Vic > Vic's Quotes

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”
― Marcus Aurelius , Meditations

“How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much;
Who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children;
Who has filled his niche and accomplished his task;
Who has never lacked appreciation of Earth's beauty or failed to express it;
Who has left the world better than he found it,
Whether an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul;
Who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had;
Whose life was an inspiration;
Whose memory a benediction.”
― Bessie Anderson Stanley, More Heart Throbs Volume Two in Prose and Verse Dear to the American People And by them contributed as a Supplement to the original $10,000 Prize Book HEART THROBS

“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Always do what you are afraid to do.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, not the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself in your way of thinking.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.”
― Henry Ward Beecher

“Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, "Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?" neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility. . . .”
― Marcus Aurelius , Meditations

“Unhappy am I because this has happened to me.- Not so, but happy am I, though this has happened to me, because I continue free from pain, neither crushed by the present nor fearing the future.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Life is like a play: it's not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.”
― Seneca

“Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.”
― Seneca

“A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand.”
― Seneca

“The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.”
― Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. ”
― Seneca

“The final hour when we cease to exist does not itself bring death; it merely of itself completes the death-process. We reach death at that moment, but
we have been a long time on the way.”
― Seneca

“Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“Death tugs at my ear and says, 'Live. I am coming.”
― Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

“Every calling is great when greatly pursued.”
― Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

“As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, First Part

“You cannot change what you are, only what you do.”
― Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass

“Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. And between the two my life flows.”
― Nisargadatta Maharaj

“Love says 'I am everything.' Wisdom says 'I am nothing.' Between the two, my life flows.”
― Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That

“the circumstances of men’s lives do much to determine their philosophy, but, conversely, their philosophy does much to determine their circumstances.”
― Bertrand Russell

“the circumstances of men’s lives do much to determine their philosophy, but, conversely, their philosophy does much to determine their circumstances”
― Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy

“I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs