Bornali Sinha > Bornali's Quotes

“The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

“You are a little soul carrying around a corpse”
― Epictetus

“How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself and in no instance bypass the discriminations of reason? You have been given the principles that you ought to endorse, and you have endorsed them. What kind of teacher, then, are you still waiting for in order to refer your self-improvement to him? You are no longer a boy, but a full-grown man. If you are careless and lazy now and keep putting things off and always deferring the day after which you will attend to yourself, you will not notice that you are making no progress, but you will live and die as someone quite ordinary.
From now on, then, resolve to live as a grown-up who is making progress, and make whatever you think best a law that you never set aside. And whenever you encounter anything that is difficult or pleasurable, or highly or lowly regarded, remember that the contest is now: you are at the Olympic Games, you cannot wait any longer, and that your progress is wrecked or preserved by a single day and a single event. That is how Socrates fulfilled himself by attending to nothing except reason in everything he encountered. And you, although you are not yet a Socrates, should live as someone who at least wants to be a Socrates.”
― Epictetus (From Manual 51)

“First say to yourself what you would be;
and then do what you have to do.”
― Epictetus

“Attach yourself to what is spiritually superior, regardless of what other people think or do. Hold to your true aspirations no matter what is going on around you.”
― Epictetus

“Why do you want to read anyway – for the sake of amusement or mere erudition? Those are poor, fatuous pretexts.
Reading should serve the goal of attaining peace; if it doesn’t make you peaceful, what good is it?”
― Epictetus, Of Human Freedom

“When a man is proud because he can understand and explain the
writings of Chrysippus, say to yourself, if Chrysippus had not written
obscurely, this man would have had nothing to be proud of.”
― Epictetus

“The time is at hand when you will have forgotten everything; and the time is at hand when all will have forgotten you. Always reflect that soon you will be no one, and nowhere.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Do not think that what is hard for you to master is humanly impossible; and if it is humanly possible, consider it to be within your reach.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“No one loses any other life than the one he now lives, nor does one live any other life than that which he will lose.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Be tolerant with others and strict with yourself.”
― Marcus Aurelius

“Soon, you will have forgotten everything.
Soon, everybody will have forgotten you.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“To read with diligence; not to rest satisfied with a light and superficial knowledge, nor quickly to assent to things commonly spoken”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.”
― Marcus Aurelius

“Give your heart to the trade you have learnt, and draw refreshment from it.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“People try to get away from it all—to the country, to the beach, to the mountains. You always wish that you could too. Which is idiotic: you can get away from it anytime you like. By going within. Nowhere you can go is more peaceful—more free of interruptions—than your own soul. Especially if you have other things to rely on. An instant’s recollection and there it is: complete tranquillity. And by tranquillity I mean a kind of harmony. So keep getting away from it all—like that. Renew yourself. But keep it brief and basic. A quick visit should be enough to ward off all < . . . > and send you back ready to face what awaits you. What’s there to complain about? People’s misbehavior? But take into consideration: • that rational beings exist for one another; • that doing what’s right sometimes requires patience; • that no one does the wrong thing deliberately; • and the number of people who have feuded and envied and hated and fought and died and been buried. . . . and keep your mouth shut. Or are you complaining about the things the world assigns you? But consider the two options: Providence or atoms. And all the arguments for seeing the world as a city. Or is it your body? Keep in mind that when the mind detaches itself and realizes its own nature, it no longer has anything to do with ordinary life—the rough and the smooth, either one. And remember all you’ve been taught—and accepted—about pain and pleasure. Or is it your reputation that’s bothering you? But look at how soon we’re all forgotten. The abyss of endless time that swallows it all. The emptiness of all those applauding hands. The people who praise us—how capricious they are, how arbitrary. And the tiny region in which it all takes place. The whole earth a point in space—and most of it uninhabited. How many people there will be to admire you, and who they are. So keep this refuge in mind: the back roads of your self. Above all, no strain and no stress. Be straightforward. Look at things like a man, like a human being, like a citizen, like a mortal. And among the things you turn to, these two: i. That things have no hold on the soul. They stand there unmoving, outside it. Disturbance comes only from within—from our own perceptions. ii. That everything you see will soon alter and cease to exist. Think of how many changes you’ve already seen. “The world is nothing but change. Our life is only perception.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“If you set yourself to your present task along the path of true reason, with all determination, vigour,and good will: if you admit no distraction, but keep your own divinity pure and standing strong, as if you had to surrender it right now; if you grapple this to you, expecting nothing, shirking nothing, but self-content with each present action taken in accordance with nature and a heroic truthfulness in all that you say and mean - then you will lead a good life. And nobody is able to stop you.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Don’t look down on death, but welcome it. It too is one of the things required by nature. Like youth and old age. Like growth and maturity. Like a new set of teeth, a beard, the first gray hair. Like sex and pregnancy and childbirth. Like all the other physical changes at each stage of life, our dissolution is no different. So this is how a thoughtful person should await death: not with indifference, not with impatience, not with disdain, but simply viewing it as one of the things that happen to us. Now you anticipate the child’s emergence from its mother’s womb; that’s how you should await the hour when your soul will emerge from its compartment. Or perhaps you need some tidy aphorism to tuck away in the back of your mind. Well, consider two things that should reconcile you to death: the nature of the things you’ll leave behind you, and the kind of people you’ll no longer be mixed up with. There’s no need to feel resentment toward them—in fact, you should look out for their well-being, and be gentle with them—but keep in mind that everything you believe is meaningless to those you leave behind. Because that’s all that could restrain us (if anything could)—the only thing that could make us want to stay here: the chance to live with those who share our vision. But now? Look how tiring it is—this cacophony we live in. Enough to make you say to death, “Come quickly. Before I start to forget myself, like them.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“32. You have to assemble your life yourself—action by action. And be satisfied if each one achieves its goal, as far as it can. No one can keep that from happening. —But there are external obstacles.… Not to behaving with justice, self-control, and good sense. —Well, but perhaps to some more concrete action. But if you accept the obstacle and work with what you’re given, an alternative will present itself—another piece of what you’re trying to assemble. Action by action.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“No thefts of free will reported.”[—Epictetus.]”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“When you start to lose your temper, remember: There’s nothing manly about rage. It’s courtesy and kindness that define a human being—and a man. That’s who possesses strength and nerves and guts, not the angry whiners. To react like that brings you closer to impassivity—and so to strength. Pain is the opposite of strength, and so is anger. Both are things we suffer from, and yield to.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Your three components: body, breath, mind. Two are yours in trust; to the third alone you have clear title. If you can cut yourself—your mind—free of what other people do and say, of what you’ve said or done, of the things that you’re afraid will happen, the impositions of the body that contains you and the breath within, and what the whirling chaos sweeps in from outside, so that the mind is freed from fate, brought to clarity, and lives life on its own recognizance—doing what’s right, accepting what happens, and speaking the truth— If you can cut free of impressions that cling to the mind, free of the future and the past—can make yourself, as Empedocles says, “a sphere rejoicing in its perfect stillness,” and concentrate on living what can be lived (which means the present) . . . then you can spend the time you have left in tranquillity. And in kindness. And at peace with the spirit within you.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“our own worth is measured by what we devote our energy to.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Ambition means tying your well-being to what other people say or do.

Self-indulgence means tying it to the things that happen to you.

Sanity means tying it to your own actions.”
― Marcus Aurelius

“A little flesh, a little breath, and a Reason to rule all – that is myself.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“It is in our power to have no opinion about a thing and not to be disturbed in our soul; for things themselves have no natural power to form our judgments.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Observe, in short, how transient and trivial is all mortal life; yesterday a drop of semen, tomorrow a handful of spice or ashes. Spend, therefore, these fleeting moments of earth as Nature would have you spend them, and then go to your rest with a good grace, as an olive falls in its season, with a blessing for the earth.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“People who labor all their lives but have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse toward are wasting their time—even when hard at work.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Nowhere you can go is more peaceful—more free of interruptions—than your own soul. Especially”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“8. It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character. Otherwise it cannot harm you—inside or out.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations