Nicole

“Remember: philosophy requires
only what your nature already demands.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“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

“Power is a game, and in games you do not judge your opponents by their intentions but by the effects of their actions.”
― Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power

“Truth, in the great practical concerns
of life, is so much a question of the reconciling and
combining of opposites, that very few have minds sufficiently
capacious and impartial to make the adjustment with an
approach to correctness, and it has to be made by the rough
process of a struggle between combatants fighting under
hostile banners.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty