The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.
Joseph Campbell (1904 – 1987), quoted in Reflections on the Art of Living: A Joseph Campbell Companion
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Category: Echoes through time
Treat with respect the power you have to form an opinion. By it alone can the helmsman within you avoid forming opinions that are at variance with nature and with the constitution of a reasonable being.
Marcus Aurelius (AD 120 – 180), Meditations (3.9)
Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.
William Morris (1834 – 1896), Hopes and Fears for Art: Five Lectures Delivered in Birmingham. London and Nottingham, 1878-1881
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Time is a river, the resistless flow of all created things. One thing no sooner comes in sight than it is hurried past and another is borne along, only to be swept away in its turn.
Marcus Aurelius (AD 120 – 180), Meditations (4.43)
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Everything is but what your opinion makes it; and that opinion lies within yourself. Renounce it when you will, and at once you have rounded the foreland and all is calm; a tranquil sea, a tideless haven.
Marcus Aurelius (AD 120 – 180), Meditations (12.22)
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To Nature, whence all things come and whither all return, the cry of the humble and well-instructed heart is, ‘Give as thou wilt, take back as thou wilt;’ yet uttered with no heroics, but in pure obedience and goodwill.
Marcus Aurelius (AD 120 – 180), Meditations (10.14)
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Political language – and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists – is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
George Orwell (1903 – 1950), Politics and the English Language
A man does not sin by commission alone, but often by omission.
Marcus Aurelius (AD 120 – 180), Meditations (9.5)
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Accept modestly; surrender gracefully.
Marcus Aurelius (AD 120 – 180), Meditations (8.33)
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Perhaps you think the Creator sent you here to dispose of us as you see fit. If I thought you were sent by the Creator, I might be induced to think you had a right to dispose of me. Do not misunderstand me, but understand fully with reference to my affection for the land. I never said the land was mine to do with as I choose. The one who has a right to dispose of it is the one who has created it. I claim a right to live on my land and accord you the privilege to return to yours.
Chief Joseph (1840 – 1904), Speech from 1876 rejecting demands to lead his people onto a reservation.
Image: Edward S. Curtis/Library of Congress