A long long time ago I began collecting inspirational quotes and aphorisms which became my collection of quotes.
Life is not ever going to be content. Life is never going to be normal. For the rest of your life you’re on a journey that has ups and downs and ups and downs, it is a roller coaster that never ends. Until one day you close your eyes and you’re off the roller coaster. And I think for me, I just want to be on as many different journey’s as possible, so at least if I’m on a roller coaster, there’s a new zigzag and a turn that I didn’t know about before.
~ Scooter Braun
slip:4a595.
But what if my friends there should die? What else could that signify except that men who are mortal have died? Do you at once wish to live to be old, and yet not to see the death of any one you love? Do you not know that, in a long course of time, many and various events must necessarily happen? That a fever must get the better of one person, a highwayman of another, a tyrant of a third?
~ Epictetus
slip:4a265.
The modern struggle — Lone individuals summoning inhuman willpower, fasting, meditating, and exercising, up against armies of scientists and statisticians weaponizing abundant food, screens, and medicine into junk food, clickbait news, infinite porn, endless games and addictive drugs.
~ Naval Ravikant
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One never notices what has been done; One can only see what remains to be done.
~ Marie Curie
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Somebody has arrived from Rome. “I only hope there is no bad news.” Why, what harm can happen to you when you are not there? — Somebody has arrived from Greece. “I only hope there is no bad news.” Why, at this rate, every place can be the cause of misfortune to you. Is it not enough for you to be unfortunate where you are, but must you be unhappy on the other side of the sea also, and by letter? Such is the security of your condition!
~ Epictetus
slip:4a557.
…the world is one great city, and the substance out of which it is formed is single, and there must necessarily be a cycle of change, in which one thing gives way to another, and some things are destroyed and others come into being, and some things remain where they were and others are moved.
~ Epictetus
slip:4a566.
[Concerning our dealings with other people,] it is better to fall in with crows than with flatterers; for in the one case you are devoured when dead, in the other case while alive.
~ Antisthenes
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The school of a philosopher is a surgery. You should not depart from it in pleasure, but in pain, for you are not healthy when you come in, but one of you has a dislocated shoulder, another an abscess, another a fistula, another a headache. And am I to come up with pretty thoughts and reflections, so that each of you will go away praising me, but with the same dislocated shoulder, the same aching head, the same fistula, and the same abscess that you brought in?
~ Epictetus
slip:4a295.
First tell yourself what sort of man you want to be; then act accordingly in all you do. For in almost everything else we see this to be the practice. Athletes first determine what kind of athlete they want to be, and then act accordingly. … You will find the same in the arts. If you are a carpenter, you will have these procedures, if a blacksmith, those. For, if we do not refer each of our actions to some standard, we shall be acting at random; if to an improper standard, we shall fail utterly.
~ Epictetus
slip:4a280.
Meditation is intermittent fasting for the mind. Too much sugar leads to a heavy body, and too many distractions lead to a heavy mind. Time spent undistracted and alone, in self-examination, journaling, meditation, resolves the unresolved and takes us from mentally fat to fit.
~ Naval Ravikant
slip:4a594.
If you remember what an author says, you have learned something from reading him. If what he says is true, you have even learned something about the world. But whether it is a fact about the book or a fact about the world that you have learned, you have gained nothing but information if you have exercised only your memory. You have not been enlightened. Enlightenment is achieved only when, in addition to knowing what an author says, you know what he means and why he says it.
~ Mortimer Adler
slip:4a360.
What, then, is wrong with you? I tell you, it is this, that you have neglected and corrupted that part of you, whatever it may be, with which we feel desire or aversion, and the impulse to act or not to act. Neglected in what way? By letting it remian ignorant of the true nature of the good, to which it was born, and of the nature of evil, and of what it has as its own and what is not its own.
~ Epictetus
slip:4a321.
Like an ape, you imitate whatever you see, and one thing after another is sure to please you, but no longer to please you as soon as it becomes familiar. For you have never entered upon anything with due consideration, nor after examining the whole matter carefully and systematically, but always approach things in a random and poorly motivated manner.
~ Epictetus
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To thrive amid unprecedented amounts of novelty, we must shift from being mere seekers of the new to being connoisseurs of it.
~ Winifred Gallagher
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You know, Phaedrus, that is the strange thing about writing, which makes it truly correspond to painting. The painter’s products stand before us as though they were alive. But if you question them, they maintain a majestic silence. It is the same with written words. They seem to talk to you as though they were intelligent, but if you ask them anything about what they say from a desire to be instructed they go on telling just the same thing forever.
~ Socrates
slip:4a538.
When you have considered all these things with care, then, if you think fit, approach philosophy, and be willing to give up all of this in exchange for serenity, freedom and an undisturbed mind. Otherwise, do not come near; do not, like children, be at one time a philosopher, later a tax-collector, then a rhetorititian, and then one of Caesar’s procurators. These things are not compatible. You must be one man, either good or bad. You must cultivate either your own ruling faculty or externals, and apply yourself either to things within or those outside; that is, you must assume either the attitude of a philosopher or that of a layman.
~ Epictetus
slip:4a554.
Tell me and I’ll forget;
~ Chinese proverb
Show me and I may remember;
Involve me and I’ll understand.
slip:4a363.
No sign of any good habit, no attention or regard to yourselves. You do not watch yourself closely and ask, “How do I deal with the impressions that befall me? In accordance with nature or contrary to nature? As I ought, or as I ought not to? Do I say to the things that lie outside the sphere of choice that they are nothing to me?” If you are not yet in this state, fly from your former habits, fly from all laymen, if you ever want to make a start on becoming somebody.
~ Epictetus
slip:4a548.
To trace something unknown back to something known is alleviating, soothing, gratifying and gives moreover a feeling of power. Danger, disquiet, anxiety attend the unknown—the first instinct is to eliminate these distressing states. First principle: Any explanation is better than none […] the cause-creating drive is thus conditioned and excited by the feeling of fear.
~ Friederich Nietzsche
slip:4a362.
For who is the man under training? The man who practices not exercising his desire, and directing this aversion only to things that lie within the sphere of choice, and who practices the hardest in the things most difficult to achieve. So different people will have to practice harder in different respects.
~ Epictetus
slip:4a569.