The artist belongs to his work, not the work to the artist.
~ Novalis
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Who belongs to what? →
A really good idea →
[…] I just stumbled across [koans] in a book. They looked to be a kind of Chinese poetry. It was at a time when managing my mind had come to seem like a really good idea. And I needed a method. I knew immediately that koans might help. It was as if I held out my hand to see if it was raining and a yellow ball fell into my palm.
~ John Tarrant
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Difficult passages →
I don’t wear down my nails over some difficult passage in a book; I’ll make one or two forays, then if that fails I’ll give up. My mind is only really made for leapfrogging. What I don’t make out at the first attempt, I strain to see through an even deeper murk at every renewed effort.
~ Michel de Montaigne
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Upended, then smashed →
That career of yours leads over a clif. To leave such an exhalted life, you have to fall. And once prosperity begins to push us over, we cannot even resist. We could wish to fall only once, or at least to fall from an upright position, but we are not allowed. Fortune deos not only overturn us: It upends us, and then smashes us.
~ Seneca
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How we feel about it →
We don’t get to choose what happens to us, but we can always choose how we feel about it. And why on earth would you choose to feel anything but good? We can choose to render a good account of ourselves. If the event must occur, Amor Fati (a love of fate) is the response.
Ryan Holiday
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Your current reality →
You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
James Stockdale
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Undertake a journey →
I took [Judith Wright’s] reply to mean that for certain kinds of knowledge you have to undertake a journey. It isn’t like pouring water into a bucket—a process by which neither water nor bucket is much changed—It seemed that if I took this journey I would be utterly changed. And before setting out, I couldn’t predict what that change would be.
~ John Tarrant, from Bring Me the Rhinoceros
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Begin it →
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.
~ John Anster
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Due proportion →
Philosophy demands self-restraint, not self-abnegation—and even self-restraint can comb its hair. The limit I suggest is this: Our habits should mingle the ideal with the ordinary in due proportion, our way of life should be one that everyone can admire without finding it unrecognizable.
~ Seneca, Moral Letters, 5.5
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Forbearance →
Clearheadedness and action are not always enough, in politics or in life. Some obstacles are beyond a snap of the fingers or novel solution. It is not alway possible for one person to rid the world of a great evil or stop a country bent toward conflict. Of course, we try—because it can happen. But we should be ready for it not to. And we need to be able to find a greater purpose in this suffering and handle it with firmness and forbearance.
~ Ryan Holiday, from The Obstacle is the Way
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