Ile Spasev > Ile's Quotes

“Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“Warriors should suffer their pain silently.”
― Erin Hunter, Into the Wild

“Complaining does not work as a strategy. We all have finite time and energy. Any time we spend whining is unlikely to help us achieve our goals. And it won't make us happier.”
― Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

“It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.”
― Seneca, The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters

“For what prevents us from saying that the happy life is to have a mind that is free, lofty, fearless and steadfast - a mind that is placed beyond the reach of fear, beyond the reach of desire, that counts virtue the only good, baseness the only evil, and all else but a worthless mass of things, which come and go without increasing or diminishing the highest good, and neither subtract any part from the happy life nor add any part to it?
A man thus grounded must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters

“There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power or our will. ”
― Epictetus

“If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make excuses about what is said of you but answer, "He was ignorant of my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these alone.”
― Epictetus

“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”
― Epictetus

“Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it.”
― Epictetus

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

“The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.”
― Epictetus

“If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.”
― Epictetus

“Don't just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents.”
― Epictetus, The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness

“You are a little soul carrying about a corpse, as Epictetus used to say.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Other people's views and troubles can be contagious. Don't sabotage yourself by unwittingly adopting negative, unproductive attitudes through your associations with others.”
― Epictetus

“He who laughs at himself never runs out of things to laugh at.”
― Epictetus

“People are not disturbed by things, but by the views they take of them.”
― Epictetus, Enchiridion

“Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems”
― Epictetus

“Any person capable of angering you becomes your master;
he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him.”
― Epictetus

“First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak.”
― Epictetus

“The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests. ”
― Epictetus

“Circumstances don't make the man, they only reveal him to himself.”
― Epictetus

“It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.”
― Epictetus

“Only the educated are free.”
― Epictetus

“To accuse others for one's own misfortune is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete.”
― Epictetus

“Why so much grief for me? No man will hurl me down to Death, against my fate. And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it, neither brave man nor coward, I tell you - it’s born with us the day that we are born.”
― Homer, The Iliad

“Come, Friend, you too must die. Why moan about it so?
Even Patroclus died, a far, far better man than you.
And look, you see how handsome and powerful I am?
The son of a great man, the mother who gave me life--
A deathless goddess. But even for me, I tell you,
Death and the strong force of fate are waiting.
There will come a dawn or sunset or high noon
When a man will take my life in battle too--
flinging a spear perhaps
Or whipping a deadly arrow off his bow.”
― Homer, The Iliad

“I say no wealth is worth my life! Not all they claim
was stored in the depths of Troy, that city built on riches,
in the old days of peace before the sons of Achaea came-
not all the gold held fast in the Archer's rocky vaults,
in Phoebus Apollo's house on Pytho's sheer cliffs!
Cattle and fat sheep can all be had for the raiding,
tripods all for the trading, and tawny-headed stallions.
But a man's life breath cannot come back again-
no raiders in force, no trading brings it back,
once it slips through a man's clenched teeth.
Mother tells me,
the immortal goddess Thetis with her glistening feet,
that two fates bear me on to the day of death.
If I hold out here and I lay siege to Troy,
my journey home is gone, but my glory never dies.
If I voyage back to the fatherland I love,
my pride, my glory dies...
true, but the life that's left me will be long,
the stroke of death will not come on me quickly.”
― Homer, The Iliad

“I do my thing and you do your thing.
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,
And you are not in this world to live up to mine.
You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful.
If not, it can't be helped.”
― Fritz Perls

“Learning is the discovery that something is possible”
― Fritz Perls