A long long time ago I began collecting inspirational quotes and aphorisms which became my collection of quotes.
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
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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
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When evening has come, I return to my house and go into my study. At the door I take off my clothes of the day, covered with mud and mire, and I put on my regal and courtly garments; and decently reclothed, I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, received by them lovingly, I feed on the food that alone is mine and that I was born for. There I am not ashamed to speak with them and to ask them the reasons for their actions; and they in their humanity reply to me. And for the space of four hours I feel no boredom, I forget every pain, I do not fear poverty, death does not frighten me. I deliver myself entirely to them.
~ Niccolò Machiavelli
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The good man is invincible; for he engages in no contest where he is not superior. “If you want my land, take it, and take my servants, take my public post, take my poor body. But you will not cause my desire to fail to attain its end, or my aversion to fall into what it would avoid.” This is the only contest he enters into: How can he fail, then, to be invincible?
~ Epictetus
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The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast
~ Bob Dylan
The slow one now, will later be fast
As the present now, will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now, will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’
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But what does Socrates say? “As one man rejoices in the improvement of his land, and another in that of his horse, so I rejoice day by day in following my own improvement.
~ Epictetus
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Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt
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What would you like to be doing when you are overtaken by [disease and death]? For you surely will be, whatever you are doing. If you think you could be doing something better than this when you are overtaken, go and do it. For my own part, may death overtake me while I am engaged in nothing other than the care of my own faculty of choice, so that it may be unhindered, unrestrained, serene, and free.
~ Epictetus
slip:4a364.
The soul is like a vessel filled with water; and impressions are like a ray of light that falls upon the water. If the water is disturbed, the ray will seem to be disturbed likewise, though in reality it is not.
~ Epictetus
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Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster. For when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
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