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There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance — that principle is contempt prior to investigation.
Be not disgusted, nor discouraged, nor dissatisfied, if you do not succeed in doing everything according to right principles, but when you fail, return back again, and be content if the greater part of what you do is consistent with man’s nature. Love this to which you return, and do not return to philosophy as if she were a master, but act like those who have tired eyes and apply a drenching with water. Then you will not fail to obey reason, and you will repose in it.
Always run in the short way, and the short way is the natural. Accordingly, say and do everything in conformity with the soundest reason. For such a purpose frees a man from trouble and warfare and all artificiality.
Say nothing more to yourself than what the first appearances report. Suppose that it has been reported to you that a certain person speaks ill of you. This has been reported, but that you have been injured has not been reported… Thus then always abide by the first appearances, and add nothing yourself from within, and then nothing hurtful happens to you.
Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.
Practice right view, right aim, right speech, right action, right living, right effort, right mindfulness, right meditation.
It is good to tame the mind.
There is provided an escape from the narrowness and poverty of the individual life, and the possibility of a life which is other and larger than our own, and yet which is most truly our own. For, to be ourselves, we must be more than ourselves. What we call love is, in truth… the losing of our individual selves to gain a larger self.
When we begin at the real beginning — when thought starts where alone it legitimately can start — it is forced onwards, from step to step, by an irresistible inward necessity, and cannot stop short till it has found its goal in the sphere of universal and absolute truth, or in that Infinite Mind which is at once the beginning and the end, the source and the final explanation of all thought and being.
Loud clamour is always more or less insane.
The great law of culture is: Let each become all that he was created capable of being; expand, if possible, to his full growth; resisting all impediments, casting off all foreign, especially all noxious adhesions, and show himself at length in his own shape and stature, be these what they may.
Be absolute with death. Either death or life
Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life:
If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing
That none but fools would keep.
Merely, thou art death’s fool,
For him thou labor’st by thy flight to shun,
And yet run’st toward him still.
How would you be
If He, which is the top of judgment, should
But judge you as you are? Oh, think on that,
And mercy then will breathe within your lips
Like man new mad.
A sound direction is not so much indicated by never making a mistake, as by never repeating it.
What we call conscience, is, in many instances, only a wholesome fear of the constable.
The world is his who can see through its pretension.
It is no proof of a man’s understanding to be able to confirm whatever he pleases; but to be able to discern that what is true is true, and that what is false is false; this is the mark and character of intelligence.
Do not cumber yourself with fruitless pains to mend and remedy remote effects; let the soul be erect, and all things will go well.
The walls of rude minds are scrawled all over with facts, with thoughts. They shall one day bring a lantern and read the inscriptions.
