…we should not be too confident in our belief of anything.
cicero; tusculan disputations
No matter what plans you make, no matter what you acquire, the thief will enter from the unguarded side. Be occupied, then, with what you really value and let the thief take something less.
Rumi; Mathnawi II
Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.
Marcus aurelius; Meditations
I possess, but I am not possessed by her; since the best thing is to possess pleasures without being their slave, not to be devoid of pleasures.
aristippus [according to Diogenes laertius in lives of the eminent philosophers]
Do not fear the gods. Do not fear death. What is good is easy to attain. What is painful is easy to endure.
philodemus; Herculaneum papyrus [Often referred to as the four cures of epicurus]
I'll tell you a plan for gaining wealth, Better than banking, trade or leases — Take a bank note and fold it up, And then you will find your money in creases! This wonderful plan, without danger or loss, Keeps your cash in your hands, where nothing can trouble it; And every time that you fold it across, 'Tis as plain as the light of the day that you double it!
Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
Isn’t making a smoking section in a restaurant like making a peeing section in a swimming pool?
I don’t believe there’s any problem in this country, no matter how tough it is, that Americans, when they roll up their sleeves, can’t completely ignore.
Here’s all you have to know about men and women; women are crazy, men are stupid. And the main reason that women are crazy is that men are stupid.
I like it when a flower or a little tuft of grass grows through a crack in the concrete. It’s so fuckin’ heroic.
The head Sublime, the heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty, the hands and feet Proportion.
As the air to a bird, or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible.
The crow wished everything was black, the owl that everything was white.
Exuberance is Beauty.
If the lion was advised by the fox, he would be cunning.
Improvement makes straight roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement are roads of Genius.
Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.
Where man is not, nature is barren.
Truth can never be told so as to be understood and not to be believed.
Enough! or Too much.
* * * The ancient poets animated all sensible objects with Gods and Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged and numerous senses could perceive.
And particularly they studied the Genius of each city and country, placing it under its mental deity.
Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of and enslaved the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects.
Thus began Priesthood.
Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales.
And at length they pronounced that the Gods had ordered such things.
Thus men forgot that all deities reside in the human breast.
In the drowsy dark caves of the mind / dreams build their nest with fragments / dropped from day’s caravan.
From the solemn gloom of the temple / children run out to sit in the dust, / God watches them play / and forgets the priest.
The wind tries to take the flame by storm / only to blow it out.
The same sun is newly born in new lands / in a ring of endless dawns.
When death comes and whispers to me, / “Thy days are ended.” / let me say to him, “I have lived in love / and not in mere time.” / He will ask, “Will thy songs remain?” / I shall say, “I know not, but this I know / that often when I sang I found my eternity.
Fireflies by Rabindranath Tagore is in the public domain and can be read at sites such as:
No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.
william blake
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
William blake
Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion.
William Blake
The fox condemns the trap, not himself.
William Blake
Exuberance is Beauty.
William blake
Without Contraries is no Progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.
William Blake
If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
William blake
The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.
William Blake
I also asked Isaiah what made him go naked and barefoot three years. He answer’d: ‘The same that made our friend Diogenes, the Grecian.’
William Blake
The most sublime act is to set another before you.
William blake
NOTE: William Blake’s “The Marriage of Heaven in Hell” is available in many collections of his poetry, and is in the public domain and available via Project Gutenberg at: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/45315
Tiger Riding for Beginners 