The great charm of conversation consists less in the display of one’s own wit and intelligence, than in the power to draw forth the resources of others. […] The true man of genius will delicately make all who come in contact with him feel the exquisite satisfaction of knowing that they have appeared to advantage.
~ La Bruyère
slip:4a611.
You must catch yourself. Some people boast of their failings; Do you suppose a man who counts his vices as virtues can take thought for remedying them? So far as you can, then, be your own prosecutor, investigate yourself, function first as accuser, then as judge, and only in the end as advocate. And sometimes you must overrule the advocate.
~ Seneca
slip:4a578.
Another reprehensible pair is the man who is never at ease and the man who is always at ease. Bustle is not briskness but the agitation of a turbulent mind. And disdaining all activity as a nuisance is not ease but enervation and inertia. … The two attitudes should temper one another: the easy going man should act, the active man take it easy. Consult nature: she will tell you that she created both day and night.
~ Seneca
slip:4a575.
I learned that the best projects grow organically at their own pace, and how terribly important all partnerships are. I have always had a ton of ideas, more than I could ever follow upon or make happen. So much of my dreaming and visioning was all in my own heart and mind. It was not that easy to share it. I have finally learned that I must communicate, (try that when you can’t talk.)
~ Jeff Lowe
slip:4a609.
Students today should begrudge every moment of time. This dewlike life fades away; Time speeds swiftly. In this short life of ours, avoid involvement in superfluous things and just study the Way.
~ Zenji Dōgen
slip:4a608.
No one is crushed by adverse Fortune who has not first been beguiled by her smile. Only those who become enamored of her gifts as if they were their own forever, and expect deference because of them are prostrated by grief when the deceitful and ephemeral baubles abandon empty and childish minds ignorant of every abiding satisfaction.
~ Seneca
slip:4a367.
Why are their pleasures uneasy? Because the motives upon which they are founded are not stable and they totter with the frivolity which gave them birth. … Laboriously they attain what they desire, anxiously they hold what they have attained, and in the meanwhile irrecoverable time is not taken into consideration.
~ Seneca
slip:4a373.
Training prepares your body and, most important, your mind for ascent through consistent, hard, disciplined practice.
~ Mark Twight
Go simply, train smart, climb well.
slip:4a607.
Books? How, or to what end? For is not reading a kind of preparation for living, but living itself made up of things other than books? It is as if an athlete, when he enters the stadium, should break down and weep because he is not exercising outside. This is what you were exercising for; this is what the jumping-weights, and the sand, and your young partners were all for. So are you now seeking for these, when it is the time for action?
~ Epictetus
slip:4a376.
The ideal agent’s frame of reference is thus her whole life, represented as accurately as a human being can remember its history and imagine its future, and lived as intelligently as a human being can exploit its possibilities.
~ Lawrence Becker
slip:4a576.
Remember that it is not oly a desire for riches and power that makes you abject and subservient to others, but also a desire for quiet and leisure, and travel and learning. For the value you place on an external object, whatever it may be, makes you subservient to another.
~ Epictetus
slip:4a379.
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
slip:4a408.
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
slip:4a385.
The aim of an argument, or of a discussion, should not be victory but progress.
~ Karl Popper
slip:4a606.
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.
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,
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.
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.
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.
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.