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SAYINGS


SAYINGS AND QUOTES

Sayings of revelation inscribed onto the Platinum Plates of Jesus-Buddha include the following sections :

Proverbs ; QUOTES ; Aesop ; Oscar Wilde ; Nietzsche ; Hindu ; Buddha ; The Bible ; Confucius ; Aristotle ; Schopenhauer ; Time ; Jung ; Stoics

 

PROVERBS

                                                

  1. Action is worry’s worst enemy.

 

  1. The eyes are the windows of the soul.

 

  1. Variety is the spice of life.

 

  1. A hungry man is an angry man.

 

5, What you don’t know can’t hurt you.

 

  1. When in Rome do as the Romans.

 

  1. One cannot love and be wise.

 

  1. Everyone speaks well of the bridge that carries him over.

 

  1. Time is money.

 

  1. Money is power.

 

  1. Power corrupts.

 

  1. When poverty comes in at the door, love flies out of the window.

 

  1. There is safety in numbers.

 

  1. Might is right. (?)

 

  1. A poor workman blames his tools.

 

  1. Travel broadens the mind.

 

  1. Believing has a core of unbelieving.

 

 

QUOTES

 

  1. Things won are done; joy’s soul lies in the doing.
    Shakespeare (1564-1616) from Troilus and Cressida

 

  1. We combat obstacles in order to get repose, and, when got, the repose insupportable.
    Henry Brooks Adams

 

  1. Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think.
    W.H.Auden, Poet (1907-73)

 

  1. Anger is a brief madness.
    Horace (65 b.c.) Roman Poet

 

  1. Anger is never without an argument, but seldom with a good one.
    Lord Halifax, Essayist (1633-95)

 

  1. A desire for desires – boredom.
    Leo Tolstoy, Novelist (1828-1910)

 

  1. Boredom is…a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.
    Bertrand Russell, Philosopher (1872-1970)

 

  1. If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.  Frances Bacon, philosopher (1561-1626)

 

  1. There lies more faith in honest doubt,

Believe me, than in half the creeds.

Tennyson, Poet (1809-1892)

 

  1. Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.
    John Henry Newman. (1801-90)

 

  1. I am too much of a sceptic to deny the possibility of anything.
    T.H.Huxley, Biologist (1825-1895)

 

  1. The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
    Bertrand Russel, Philosopher (1872-1970)

 

  1. Is not the pleasure of feeling and exhibiting power over other beings, a principle part of the gratification of cruelty?
    John Foster (1770-1843)

 

  1. Calm of mind, all passion spent.
    John Milton, Poet (1608-74)

 

  1. The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.
    Blaise Pascal, Mathematician and Philosopher (1623-62)

 

  1. The ruling passion, be it what it will,

The ruling passion conquers reason still.

Alexander Pope, Poet (1688-1744)

 

  1. Passion always goes, and boredom stays.
    Coco Chanel, Fashion Designer

 

  1. We must travel in the direction of our fear.
    John Berryman (1914-72)

 

  1. Terror…often arises from a pervasive sense of disestablishment; that things are in the unmaking.
    Steven King, Novelist (1947-)

 

  1. Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else.
    Will Rogers, Humorist us (1879-1935)

 

  1. That action is best which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers.
    Frances Hutcheson, Philosopher (1694-1746)

 

  1. The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognise that we ought to control our thoughts.
    Charles Darwin, Biologist (1809-82)

 

  1. Mere anxiety is the source of everything.
    Heideggar, German Philosopher

 

  1. Moral indignation is jealously with a halo.
    H.G.Wells, Novelist (1866-1946)

 

  1. Everyone is dragged on by their favourite pleasure.
    Virgil, Roman Poet (70-19 b.c.)

 

  1. Power is a great aphrodisiac.
    Henry Kissinger, Diplomat (1823-)

 

  1. One should look long and hard at oneself before one considers judging others.
    Moliere, Play write (1622-73)

 

  1. Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside itself – it only requires opportunity.
    George Elliot, Novelist (1819-80)

 

  1. The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to the moralists. That is why they invented hell.
    Bertrand Russell, Philosopher

 

  1. Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.
    Jung, (1870-1965) Psychoanalyst

 

  1. Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold water becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigour of the mind.
    Leonardo da Vinci, Artist, Inventor(1452-1519)

 

  1. Anger makes a dull man witty, but it keeps them poor.
    Frances Bacon, Philosopher

 

  1. Anger is one of the sinews of the soul.
    Thomas Fuller, Historian (1608-61)

 

  1. The Christian and the Communist are alike in assuming that an opponent cannot be both honest and intelligent.
    George Orwell, Novelist (1905-50)

 

  1. Everything flows and nothing stays …You can’t step twice into the same river.
    Heraclitus, Philosopher (513 b.c.)

 

  1. If we do not find anything pleasant, at least we shall find something new.
    Voltaire (1694-1778), Philosopher and Writer

 

  1. Imitation lies at the root of most human actions. A respectable person is one who conforms to custom. People are called good when they do as others do.
    Anatole France

 

  1. Variety is the spice of life.

That gives it all its flavour

William Cowper, Poet (1731-1800)

 

  1. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy;

For thy apparel oft proclaim the man.

Shakespeare (Hamlet)

 

  1. Knowledge itself is power.
    Francis Bacon, Philosopher

 

  1. Money is coined liberty, and so it is ten times dearer to a man who is deprived of freedom. If money is jingling in his pocket, he is half consoled even if he can’t spend it.
    Dostoevesky, Novelist (1821-81)

 

  1. A man of action forced into a state of thought is unhappy until he can get out of it.
    John Galsworthy

 

  1. The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do.
    Skinner, (1904-90), Behavioural Psychologist

 

  1. If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.
    Baruch Spinoza, Dutch Philosopher (1632 – 1677)

 

  1. Once you label me you negate me.Soren Kierkegaard, Danish Philosopher (1813 – 1855) 

 

  1. It is the mark of an educated mind to entertain a thought without accepting it.Aristotle, Greek Philosopher (384 – 322 bc) 

 

  1. Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.
    Somerset Maugham, Novelist

 

  1. Remember that time is money.
    Benjamin Franklin, Scientist and Statesman (1706-90)

 

  1. The regularity of an impulse or a repulsion in a soul is encountered again in habits of doing or thinking, is reproduced in consequences of which the soul knows nothing.
    Albert Camus, French Philosopher

 

  1. There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.Shakespeare

 

  1. For all knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself.Francis Bacon, Philosopher

 

  1. Hell is other people.
    Jean-Paul Satre

 

  1. One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.
    Jane Austen

 

  1. We should often be ashamed of our finest actions if the world understood all the motives behind them.Rochefoucauld

 

  1. We forget our faults easily when they are known to ourselves alone.
    Rochefoucauld

 

  1. The understanding is always the dupe of the heart.
    Rochefoucauld

 

  1. It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.
    Tolstoy

 

  1. A person’s processes are psychologically channelised by the way in which he anticipates events.
    George Kelly (1905 1967). Personality Theorist

 

  1. It is not enough to succeed. Others have to fail.Gore Vidal, Novelist

 

  1. Time provides the ultimate bond in all relationships.
    George Kelly, Psychologist

 

  1. A single word might be the spark of inextinguihable thought.
    Shelly, Poet.

 

  1. Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.
    Soren Kierkegaard, Danish Philosopher (1813 – 1855) 

 

  1. Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.
    Plato, Greek Philosopher (427 – 347 bc)

 

  1. Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives – choice, not chance determines your destiny.
    Aristotle, Greek Philosopher (384 – 322 bc) 

 

  1. The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.
    Rene Descartes, French Philosopher (1596 – 1650)

 

  1. To know what people really think, pay attention to what they do, rather than what they say.
    Rene Descartes, French Philosopher (1596 – 1650)

 

  1. We are not rich by what we possess but what we can do without.
    Immanuel Kant, German Philosopher (1724 – 1804)

 

  1. Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.
    Voltaire, French Philosopher (1694 – 1778)

 

  1. Every man is a creature of the age in which he lives and few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time.
    Voltaire, French Philosopher (1694 – 1778)

 

  1. Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.
    Voltaire, French Philosopher (1694 – 1778)

 

  1. Men are mistaken in thinking themselves free: their opinion is made up of consciousness of their own actions, and ignorance of causes by which they are determined.
    Baruch Spinoza, Dutch Philosopher (1632 – 1677)

 

  1. The supreme mystery of despotism, its prop and stay, is to keep men in a state of deception, and with the specious title of religion to cloak the fear by which they must be held in check, so that they will fight for their servitude as if for salvation.
    Baruch Spinoza, Dutch Philosopher (1632 – 1677)

 

  1. Those who tell stories rule society.
    Plato, Greek Philosopher (427 – 347 bc)

 

 

 

 

AESOP (children’s writer from Ancient Greece)

 

 

 

  1. Sometimes when we cannot get what we want, we pretend that we did not want it at all really.  (The Fox and the Grapes)

 

  1. We tend to blame others for our own mistakes.  (The Traveller and his Dog)

 

  1. We often seem more important to ourselves than we do to others.
    (The Knat and the Bull)

 

  1. Something which seems funny when it happens to someone else may not seem so funny when it happens to us.  (The Fox and the Stalk)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OSCAR WILDE (1854-1900) Writer

 

 

  1. It is far more difficult to talk about a thing than to do it.

 

  1. There is no secret to life. Life’s aim, if it has one, is simply to be always looking for temptation.

 

  1. Society takes upon itself the right to inflict appalling punishment on the individual, but it also has the supreme vice of shallowness, and fails to realize what it has done.

 

  1. The reason we all like to think so well of ourselves is that we are afraid for ourselves. The basis for optimism is sheer terror.

 

  1. I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.

 

  1. Beauty, real beauty, ends where intellectual expression begins.

 

  1. I can resist everything except temptation.

 

  1. Anything becomes a pleasure if it is done too often.

 

  1. Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.

 

  1. Misfortunes one can endure – they come from outside, they are accidents. But to suffer for one’s own faults – ah! – there is the sting to life.

 

  1. Life is terrible. It rules us, we do not rule it.

 

  1. The secret of life is to never have an emotion that is unbecoming.

 

  1. It is only the superficial qualities that last. Man’s deeper nature is soon found out.

 

  1. A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal is absolutely fatal.

 

  1. All thought is immoral. Its very essence is destruction. If you think of anything, you kill it. Nothing survives being thought of.

 

  1. Everything must come out of one’s own nature.

 

  1. Society, civilized society at least, is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating.

 

  1. To become a spectator of one’s own life is to escape the suffering of life.

 

  1. Happiness is the only thing worth having a theory about.

 

 

 

 

 

NIETZSCHE, CONTROVERSIAL Philosopher (1844 -1900)

 

 

  1. The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just, as of an anxious disposition.

 

  1. There are no moral phenomena at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena.

 

  1. Words are but symbols for the relation of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth.

 

  1. Morality is the herd instinct in the individual.

 

  1. He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

 

  1. In Individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

 

  1. There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute rules.

 

  1. All things are subject to interpretations ; whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.

 

  1. One ought to hold on to one’s heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.

 

  1. We hear only those questions for which we are in a position to find answers.

 

  1. All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth comes only from the senses.

 

  1. That which does not kill us makes us stronger. (?)

 

  1. There are various eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes : and as a result there are various truths, and as a result there is no truth.

 

  1. We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.

 

  1. The world itself is the will to power – and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power – and nothing else !

 

  1. ’I dislike him’

‘Why?’

‘I am not a match for him’

– Did anyone ever answer so ?

 

  1. It is inhuman to bless when one is being cursed.

 

  1. One loves ultimately one’s desires, not the thing desired.

 

  1. To talk much about oneself may also be a means of concealing oneself.

 

  1. He who fights with a monster should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze into you.

 

  1. The will to overcome an emotion is ultimately only the will of another, or of several other emotions.

 

  1. What? A great man? i always merely see the play actor of his own ideal.

 

  1. Who has not, at one time or another, Sacrificed himself for the sake of his good name?

 

  1. The same emotions are in man and woman but in different tempo. On that account man and woman never cease to misunderstand each other.

 

  1. Love to only one is a barbarity, for it is exercised at the expense of all others. Love to God also.

 

  1. It is not the strength but the duration of great sentiments that makes great men.

 

 

 

RELIGIOUS TEXTS

 

HINDU

 

  1. BHAGAVAD GITA Ch 2, verses 62 – 63 ( 500 b.c. )

 

While contemplating the objects of the senses, a person develops attachment for them, and from such attachment lust develops, and from lust anger arises.

From anger, delusion arises, and from delusion bewilderment of memory. When memory is bewildered, intelligence is lost, and when intelligence is lost, one falls down again into the material pool.

 

  1. BHAGAVAD GITA Ch 2, versus 56

 

One who is not disturbed in spite of the three fold miseries, who is not elated when there is happiness, and who is free from attachment, fear and anger, is called a sage of the steady mind.

 

  1. BHAGAVAD GITA Ch 3, verse 5

 

All men are forced to act helplessly according to the impulses born of the modes of material nature; therefore no one can refrain from doing something, not even for a moment.

 

  1. BHAGAVAD GITA Ch 4, verse 17

 

The intricacies of action are very hard to understand. Therefore one should know properly what action is, what forbidden action is, and what inaction is.

 

  1. BHAGAVAD GITA Ch 4, verse 37

 

As the blazing fire turns firewood to ashes, O Arjuna, so does the fire of knowledge burn to ashes all reactions to material activities.

 

  1. BHAGAVAD GITA Ch 5, verse 7

 

One who works in devotion, who is a pure soul, and who controls his mind and senses, is dear to everyone, and everyone is dear to him. Though always working, such a man is never entangled.

 

  1. BHAGAVAD GITA Ch 5, verse 8-9

 

A person in the divine consciousness, although engaged in seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, eating, moving about, sleeping and breathing, always knows within himself that he does nothing at all. Because while speaking, evacuating, receiving, opening or closing his eyes, he always knows that only the material senses are engaged with their objects and that he is aloof from them.

 

  1. BHAGAVAD GITA Ch.5, verse 22

 

An intelligent person does not take part in the sources of misery, which are due to the contact with the material senses. O son of Kunti, such pleasures have a beginning and an end, and so the wise man does not delight in them.

 

 

 

BUDDHA ( 500 b.c.)

 

 

  1. The DHAMMAPADA Ch 1, verse 1

 

What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow : our life is a creation of our mind.

 

  1. The DHAMMAPADA Ch 1, verse 212

 

From pleasure arises sorrow and from pleasure arises fear. If a man is free from pleasure, he is free from fear and sorrow.

 

  1. The DHAMMAPADA Ch 13, verse 170

 

When a man considers the world a bubble of froth, and as the illusion of an appearance, then the king of death has no power over him.

 

  1. The DAMMAPADA Ch 18, verse 252

 

The faults of others are easy to see; one’s own  are difficult to see. In truth, we carefully winnow the faults of others like chaff, whereas we cover our own, just as the wily gambler hides the trick that will prove his downfall.

 

  1. Just as a monkey frolicking in the forest seizes one branch, then immediately lets it go to grasp another, and still others in turn, so what you call thought, knowledge, O my disciple, forms and dissolves continuously.

 

words attributed to Buddha

 

  1. Is material shape permanent or impermanent?

Is what is impermanent painful or pleasant?

And is it right to regard that which is impermanent, suffering, liable to change, as “this is mine, this I am, this is my self?’’

 

words attributed to Buddha

 

  1. And King Milinda asked him: “How is your Reverence known, and what is your name, Sir?’

‘’As Nagasaena I am known, O great king, and as Nagasena do my fellow religious habitually address me. But although parents give such names nevertheless this word ‘Nagasena’ is just denomination, a designation, a conceptual term, a current appellation, a mere name. For no real person can here be apprehended.’’

 

Nagasena

 

  1. If a man were to light a lamp, could it give light throughout the whole night?

Is the flame that burns in the first watch of the night the same as the one that burns in the second?

 

Nagasena    (discussing the impermanence of human identity)

 

 

  1. The foolish believe that their own interests will suffer if they put the benefits of others first.

Dogen (Japanese Zen Master 1200 – 1253)

 

  1. What you think in your own mind to be good, or what people of the world think is good, is not necessarily good.

Dogen

 

  1. If people who keep up appearances and are attached to themselves gather together to study, not one of them will emerge with an awakened mind.

Dogen

 

  1. There is fundamentally no good or bad in the human mind; good and bad arise according to circumstances.

Dogen

 

  1. Don’t cling to your understanding. Even if you do understand something, you should ask yourself if there might be something you have not fully resolved, or if there may be some higher meaning yet.

Dogen

 

  1. People see others in terms of themselves. If you are ambitious, that is the way you see others. If you are greedy, you see others in terms of desire.

Bunan – Zen Master

 

  1. Although their fundamental essence is the same, awakened people turn inward while emotional and intellectual people pursue externals.

Torei – Zen Master

 

  1. Not falling into causality is forced denial; not being blind to causality is finding the wondrous along with the flow.

Zen Proverb.

 

  1. Suspicion in the mind makes ghosts in the dark.

Zen Proverb

 

 

THE BIBLE

 

  1. The desire accomplished is sweet to the soul Proverbs 19

 

  1. In all labour there is profit. Proverbs 23

 

  1. A merry heart doeth like a medicine. Proverbs 22

 

  1. Wine maketh merry; but money answereth all things. Ecclesiastes 19

 

  1. The love of money is the root of all evil. Timothy 10

 

 

CONFUCIUS (551-479 b.c.)

 

 

  1. The ANNALECTS book 2, 17

 

The Master said, ‘Yu, shall I tell you what it is to know. To say you know when you know, and to say you do not when you do not, that is knowledge.’

 

 

  1. The ANNALECTS, book 5, 27.

 

The Master said, ‘ I suppose I should give up hope. I have yet to meet the man who, on seeing his own errors, is able to take himself to task inwardly.’

 

 

 

Aristotle 384 – 322bc. Great Greek Philosopher

 

 

Nomachean Ethics (Chapter 10)

 

  1. Men choose what is pleasant and avoid what is painful. No one ever goes on to ask to what purpose he is pleased, feeling that Pleasure is in itself choice worthy.

 

  1. Pleasure is a movement and a generation.

 

3.. A person of course will be pleased when a supply takes place just as he will be pained when it is cut.

 

  1. When people have a lack and so have had pain first, they, of course, are pleased with the supply of their lack.

 

  1. Pleasure is attendant upon every percipient faculty, and in like manner on every intellectual operation and speculation; and that is pleasant which is most perfect.

 

6.There are some things which please when new, but afterwards not in the like way.

 

  1. Life is an act of working, and every man works at and with those things which also he best likes.

 

  1. Pleasure perfects the acts of working.

 

  1. Intellectual working differ specifically from those of the senses, and these last from one another; therefore so do the pleasures which perfect them.

 

  1. Pleasures arising from one kind of working hinder other workings; for instance, people who are fond of flute-music cannot keep their attention to conversation or discourse when they catch the sound of a flute.

 

  1. When a person is engaging in two different workings at the same time: that is, the pleasanter of the two keeps pushing out the other, and, if the disparity in pleasantness be great, then more and more till a man even ceases altogether to work at the other.

 

  1. When we are very much pleased with anything whatever, we do nothing else, and it is only when we are but moderately pleased with one occupation that we vary it with another; people for instance, who eat sweetmeats in the theatre do so most when the performance is indifferent.

 

  1. Contrary effects are produced upon the workings by the pleasure and pains proper to them.

 

  1. Pleasure attendant on workings are more closely connected with them even than the desires after them; for these last are separate both in time and nature, but the former are close to the workings, and so indivisible from them.

 

  1. It remains to sketch out happiness, since we assume that to be the one End of all human things.

 

 

 

 

SCHOPENHAUER Philosopher (1788 – 1860)

 

 

  1. The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.

 

  1. After your death you will be what you were before your birth.

 

  1. Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true for fame.

 

  1. Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.

 

  1. Money is human happiness in the abstract; he then who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes himself utterly to money.

 

  1. The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.

 

  1. Change alone is eternal, perpetual, and immortal.

 

  1. Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark on the face, especially the eyes.

 

  1. The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.

 

  1. All truth passes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

 

TIME

 

  1. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.

Wittgenstein from Tractus Logico

  1. Life is short, yet the moment transcends eternity.

ZEN saying

  1. The distinction between past present and future is only an illusion, however stubbornly persistent.

Albert Einstein

 

 

 

 

JUNG Psychoanalyst (1875 – 1961)

 

1. Everything that irritates us about others can lead to an understanding of ourselves.

 

2. Loneliness does not come from having nobody about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself.

 

3. Every form of addiction be bad whether the narcotic be alcohol, morphine or idealism.

 

4. The healthy man does not torture other beings – generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.

 

5. Midlife is the time to let go of an overdominant ego and to contemplate the deeper significance of human existence.

 

6. When an inner situation is not made conscious it appears outside as fate.

 

7. Man cannot stand a meaningless life.

 

8. The least of things with a meaning is worth more than the greatest of things without it.

 

9. The greatest and most important problems in life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.

 

10. Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness of other people.

 

11. Depression is like a woman in black, if she turns up don’t shoo her away. Invite her in, offer her a seat, treat her like a guest and listen to what she wants to say.

 

12. The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances : if there is any reaction, both are transformed.

 

13. Man needs difficulties: they are necessary for health.

 

14. Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.

 

15. Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.

 

16. There is no coming to consciousness without pain.

 

 

 

 

STOICS

 

EPICTECTUS (50 – 135 a.d.)

 

Don’t seek to have events happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do happen, and all will be well with you.

 

The trials you encounter will introduce you to your strengths. Remain steadfast… and one day you will build something that endures: something worthy of your potential.

 

When you are offended at any man’s fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger.

 

If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.

 

The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.

 

People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them.

 

Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.

 

Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlling the desire.

 

It is the nature of the wise to resist pleasures, but the foolish to be a slave to them.

 

Imagine for yourself a character, a model personality, whose example you determine to follow, in private as well as in public.

 

Never in any case say I have lost such a thing, but I have returned it. Is your child dead? It is a return. Is your wife dead? It is a return. Are you deprived of your estate? Is not this also a return?

 

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.

 

If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.

 

It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting.

 

What ought one to say then as each hardship comes? I was practicing for this, I was training for this.

 

 

 

SENECA (54 bc – 39 ad)

 

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

 

True happiness is…. to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.

 

We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.

 

It is quality rather than quantity that matters.

 

Be wary of the man who urges an action in which he himself incurs no risk.

 

The greatest remedy for anger is delay.

 

It is another’s fault if he be ungrateful, but it is mine if I do not give. To find one thankful man, I will oblige a great many that are not so.

 

He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it.

 

There is no person so severely punished, as those who subject themselves to the whip of their own remorse.

 

It is the sign of a great mind to dislike greatness, and to prefer things in measure to things in excess.

 

For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them.

 

 

 

MARCUS AURELIUS (121 – 180 ad)

 

The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.

 

Execute every act of thy life as though it were thy last.

 

When anything tempts you to feel bitter say “This is misfortune,” but “To bear this worthily is good fortune.”

 

Whoever does wrong, wrongs himself; whoever does injustice, does it to himself, making himself worse.

 

I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in self-deception and ignorance who is harmed.

 

Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than his own soul.

 

What we do now echos in eternity.