Life calls us forth to independence, and anyone who does not heed the call because of childish laziness or timidity is threatened with neurosis.
Carl Jung, Symbols of Transformation (Collected Works, volume 5)
Via Jordan Peterson.
Tag: Quotations
An empty pageant; a stage play; flocks of sheep, herds of cattle; a tussle of spearmen; a bone flung among a pack of curs; a crumb tossed into a pond of fish; ants, loaded and labouring; mice, scared and scampering; puppets, jerking on their strings – that is life. In the midst of it all you must take your stand, good-temperedly and without disdain, yet always aware that a man’s worth is no greater than the worth of his ambition.
Marcus Aurelius (AD 120 – 180), Meditations (7.3)
When force of circumstance upsets your equanimity, lose no time in recovering your self-control, and do not remain out of tune longer than you can help. Habitual recurrence to the harmony will increase your mastery of it.
Marcus Aurelius (AD 120 – 180), Meditations (6.11)
Animals in the wild flee the dangers they see and are tranquil once they have escaped; we, though, are tormented both by what is to come and what has been. Often, our goods do us harm: memory recalls the stab of fear; foresight anticipates it. No one is made wretched merely by the present.
Seneca (4 BC – AD 65), Moral Letters to Lucilius (5.9)
He whose life has a why can bear almost any how.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900), Twilight of the Idols (Maxims and Arrows, 12)
The Execupundit has sage words from Samuel Johnson:
There is no kind of idleness by which we are so easily seduced as that which dignifies itself by the appearance of business.
I suspect this is not a problem for the prolific Mr Wade. Read him regularly, here.
Photo by Holger Link on Unsplash
Adapt yourself to the environment in which your lot has been cast, and show true love to the fellow mortals with whom destiny has surrounded you.
Marcus Aurelius (AD 120 – 180), Meditations (6.39)
What fortune makes your own is not your own.
Seneca (4 BC – AD 65), Moral Letters to Lucilius (8.10)
One cannot attain a life free of anxiety if one is too concerned about prolonging it…
For fear of the final hour makes all our other hours uneasy.
Seneca (4 BC – AD 65), Moral Letters to Lucilius (1.4)
Think of the totality of all Being, and what a mite of it is yours; think of all Time, and the brief fleeting instant of it that is allotted to yourself; think of Destiny, and how puny a part of it you are.
Marcus Aurelius (AD 120 – 180), Meditations (5.24)
I also quite like the Gregory Hays’ translation of this:
Remember:
Matter. How tiny your share of it.
Time. How brief and fleeting your allotment of it.
Fate. How small a role you play in it.