What happens in the external world does not DETERMINE one’s mental / emotional experience.
It’s better to see oneself as a student than as a master — at any stage of life and development.
Be tolerant. No one knows enough to justify smug superiority.
Self-expression is what we live for, and it is curtailed to everyone’s detriment.
Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
All art is quite useless.
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are fascinating.
You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.
Death is nothing to us, because a body that has been dispersed into elements experiences no sensations, and the absence of sensation is nothing to us.
principal doctrines – No. 2
Nothing is enough to someone for whom what is enough is too little.
Vatican Sayings – No. 68
Of all the means which are procured by wisdom to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is the acquisition of friends.
Principal Doctrines – No. 27
Don’t spoil what you have by desiring what you don’t have; but remember that what you now have was once among the things only hoped for.
vatican sayings – No. 35
No pleasure is a bad thing in itself, but some pleasures are only obtainable at the cost of excessive troubles.
Principal doctrines – No. 8
And Five Honorable Mentions:
[T]here are an infinite number of worlds, some like this world, others unlike it.
Letter to Herodotus
Dreams have neither a divine nature nor a prophetic power, but they are the result of images that impact upon us.
vatican sayings – No. 24
It is pointless for a person to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself.
vatican sayings – No. 65
But one must not be so much in love with the explanation by a single way as wrongly to reject all others…
Letter to pythocles
Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search thereof when he is grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul.
Letter to Menoeceus
SOURCE: Epicurus. 2021. The Fundamental Books of Epicurus: Principal Doctrines, Vatican Sayings, and Letters. Trans. by: Robert Drew Hicks & R. Medeiros. Independently published on Amazon. 45pp.
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
Never ruin an apology with an excuse.
In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is Freedom, in water there is bacteria.
Many people die at twenty five and aren’t buried until they are seventy five.
Never confuse Motion with Action.
And Five Honorable Mentions:
Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
How many observe Christ’s birthday! How few his precepts!
It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.
If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.
Tis a great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults; greater to tell him his.
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:
Fireflies is available at PoetryVerse
“There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.”
Duncan in Act I, Scene 4
“Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return to plague the inventor.”
Macbeth in Act I, Scene 7
“when our actions do not, our fears do make us traitors”
Wife of Macduff in Act IV, Scene 2
“Then the liars and swearers are fools, for there are liars and swearers enough to beat up the honest men and hang them up.”
Son of Macduff in Act IV, Scene 2
“Life ‘s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.
Macbeth in Act V, Scene 5
There is much to admire, though, in a dedicated recluse.
Kenkō Yoshida, Essays in Idleness (No. 1)
Going on a journey, whatever the destination, makes you feel suddenly awake and alive to everything.
Kenkō Yoshida, Essays in IdleNess (No. 15)
You can find solace for all things by looking at the moon.
Kenkō Yoshida, Essays in Idleness (no. 21)
Something left not quite finished is very appealing, a gesture toward the future.
Kenkō Yoshida, Essays in Idleness (No. 82)
It’s in easy places that mistakes will always occur.
Kenkō Yoshida, Essays in Idleness (No. 109)
CITATION: Kenkō Yoshida & Kamo no Chōmei. 2013. Kenkō and Chōmei: Essays in Idleness and Hōjōki. London: Penguin. 206pp.
We fat all creatures else to fat us and we fat ourselves for maggots… a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.”
HamLet to Claudius in Act IV, Sc. 3
One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.
Hamlet to Queen Gertrude in Act I, Sc. 5
I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.
Hamlet to rosencrantz & Guildenstern in Act I, sc. 2
Brevity is the soul of wit.
Polonius to claudius & gertrude in act II, sc. 2
A knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.
hamlet to rosencrantz in act IV, Sc. 2
drawing by Kikuchi Yōsai
On flows the river ceaselessly, nor does its water ever stay the same.
Kamo no Chōmei, Hōjōki
No one owns a splendid view, so nothing prevents the heart’s delight in it.
Kamo no Chōmei, Hōjōki
Knowing what the world holds and its ways, I desire nothing from it, nor chase after its prizes. My one craving is to be at peace; my one pleasure is to live free from troubles.
Kamo no Chōmei, Hōjōki
These days, I divide myself into two uses — these hands are my servants, these feet my transport.
Kamo no Chōmei, Hōjōki
When I chance to go down to the capital, I am ashamed of my lowly beggar status, but once back here again I pity those who chase after the sordid rewards of the world.
Kamo no Chōmei, Hōjōki
Reference: Saigyō Hōshi, Kamo no Chōmei, Yoshida Kenkō. 2021. Three Japanese Buddhist Monks. New York: Penguin Books. 112pp.
Available Here
Seven Sages were spared the sickness
of perceiving the possibility of perfection,
a "perception" of the patently impossible --
in truth, just dim and flimsy imaginings of mind,
and, so, they didn't mind the inevitable
flaws of the human world.
