Sam Harrison

“Don’t seek for everything to happen as you wish it would, but rather wish that everything happens as it actually will — then your life will flow well.”
― Epictetus, Discourses and Selected Writings

“1.
Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct; but to find these reasons is no less an instinct.
2.
The world is the best of all possible worlds, and everything in it is a necessary evil.
3.
There are those who so dislike the nude that they find something indecent in the naked truth.
4.
Eclecticism. Every truth is so true that any truth must be false.
5.
True penitence condemns to silence. What a man is ready to recall he would be willing to repeat.
6.
We say that a girl with her doll anticipates the mother. It is more true, perhaps, that most mothers are still but children with playthings.
7.
Our live experiences, fixed in aphorisms, stiffen into cold epigrams. Our heart's blood, as we write it, turns to mere dull ink.”
― F.H. Bradley

“Man is unhappy because he doesn't know he's happy; only because of that. It's everything, everything, Whoever learns will at once immediately become happy, that same moment...
"And when did you find out that you were so happy?"
"Last week, on Tuesday, no, Wednesday, because it was Wednesday by then, in the night."
"And what was the occasion?"
"I don't remember, just so; I was pacing the room...it makes no difference. I stopped my clock, it was two thirty-seven."
"As an emblem that time should stop?"
Kirillov did not reply.
"They're not good," he suddenly began again, "because they don't know they're good. When they find out, they won't violate the girl. They must find out that they're good, then they'll all become good at once, all, to a man.
"Well, you did find out, so you must be good?"
"I am good."
"With that I agree, incidentally," Stavrogin muttered frowningly.
"He who teaches that all are good, will end the world."
"He who taught it was crucified."
"He will come, and his name is the man-god."
"The God-man?"
"The man-god--that's the whole difference."
"Can it be you who lights the icon lamp?"
"Yes, I lit it."
"You've become a believer?"
"The old woman likes the icon lamp...she's busy today," Kirillov muttered.
"But you don't pray yet?"
"I pray to everything. See, there's a spider crawling on the wall, I look and am thankful to it for crawling."
His eyes lit up again. He kept looking straight at Stavrogin, his gaze firm and unflinching. Stavrogin watched him frowningly and squeamishly, but there was no mockery in his eyes.
"I bet when I come the next time you'll already believe in God," he said, getting up and grabbing his hat.
"Why?" Kirillov also rose.
"If you found out that you believe in God, you would believe; but since you don't know yet that you believe in God, you don't believe," Nikolai Vsevolodovich grinned.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Demons

“Tolstoy expressed his exasperation at people who didn’t read deeply and regularly. “I cannot understand,” he said, “how some people can live without communicating with the wisest people who ever lived on earth.”
― Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key