The teachings of your instructor constitute only a small fraction of what you will learn. Your master of each movement will depend almost completely on individual, earnest practice.
~ Morihei Ueshiba
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Quotes
Facing two ways
Choose, then, which you prefer, to be loved as you used to be by those who loved you formerly by remaining like your former self, or to be better and not meet with that same affection. For if this latter course is preferable, direct yourself at once to that, and do not let the other considerations draw you away from it; for no one can make progress while facing two ways.
~ Epictetus
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The aim of an argument
The aim of an argument, or of a discussion, should not be victory but progress.
~ Karl Popper
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Not in our power
And who can never be hindered? The man who sets his desire on nothing that is not his own. And what are those things that are not our own? Those that are not in our power, either to have or not to have, or to have them of a particular nature, or under specific conditions. Our body, therefore, is not our own, its parts are not our own, and our property is not our own. So if you become attached to any of these as your own, you will be punished, as he deserves to be who sets his desire on what is not his own.
~ Epictetus
slip:4a205.
For all who come
Does the road wind uphill all the way?
~ Christina Rossetti
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.
Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
Of labour you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.
slip:4a581,
True freedom
And say while you are training yourself day after day, as you do here, not that you are pursuing philosophy (to claim that title would surely be pretentious), but that you are providing for your emancipation. For this is true freedom.
~ Epictetus
slip:4a210.
Towards the pebbled shore
Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
~ William Shakespeare
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do content.
slip:4a580.
More sweet than truth
I have known days like that, of warm winds drowsing in the heat of noon and all of summer spinning slowly on its reel, days briefly lived, that leave long music in the mind more sweet that truth; I play and rewind.
~ Russel Hoban
slip:4a579.
When thus prepared
And when you are thus prepared and thus trained to distinguish what is not your own from your own, what is subject to hindrance from what is not, to regard the latter as your concern and the form as not, and carefully keep your desire directed toward the latter, and your aversion directed towards the former, will there any longer be anyone for you to fear?
~ Epictetus
slip:4a215.
Great and noble and valuable
Further, then, answer me this: Do you think freedom to be something great and noble and valuable? — “How should I not?” Is it possible, then, that he who acquires anything so great and valuable and noble should be mean-spirited?
~ Epictetus
slip:4a220.
Normal
Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.
~ Albert Camus
slip:4a605.
Conformity
I think the reward for conformity is that everyone likes you except yourself.
~ Rita Mae Brown
slip:4a604.
More reason to worry
For even peace itself will supply more reason for worry. Not even safe circumstances will bring you confidence once your mind has been shocked—once it gets in the habit of blind panic, it can’t provide for its own safety. For it doesn’t really avoid danger, it just runs away. Yet we are exposed to greater danger with our backs turned.
~ Seneca
slip:4a225.
The source of all human evils
Why, do you not reflect, then, that the source of all human evils, and of mean-spiritedness and cowardice, is not death, but rather the fear of death? Discipline yourself, therefore, against this. To this let all your discourses, readings, exercises, tend. And then you will know that in this way alone are men made free.
~ Epictetus
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Another
The average man does not know what to do with his life, yet wants another one which lasts forever.
~ Anatole France
slip:4a603.
What did he trust in?
When Odysseus was shipwrecked and cast ashore … what did he trust in? Not in reputation, or riches, or office, but in his own strength, that is to say, in his judgements about what things are in our power and what are not. For these judgements alone are what make us free, make us immune from hinderance, raise the head of the humiliated, and make them look into the faces of the rich with unaverted eyes, and into the faces of tyrants.
~ Epictetus
slip:4a235.
Sometime in the future
There are three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.
~ David Eagleman
slip:4a602.
Shaken from what?
Ought you not first to have acquired something by the use of reason, and then to have made that secure? But you are studying to be able to prove things in argument. Prove what, though? You are studying so as not to be shaken by fallacious arguments. Shaken from what? Show me first what you are watching over, what you are measuring, or what you are weighing; and then, accordingly, show me your balance.
~ Epictetus
slip:4a240.
Civilization
You can best serve civilization by being against what usually passes for it.
~ Wendell Barry
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Unchangeable
As if all was safe and well with you, you have dwelt upon the final area of study, which has to do with unchangeability, so that you can make yourself unchangeable—in what? Your cowardice, means-spiritedness, admiration for the rich, your failure to achieve what you desire, and your lack of success in avoiding what you want to avoid. These are the things that you have been laboring to secure.
~ Epictetus
slip:4a245.