John Eise

“As the seventeenth-century French philosopher Montaigne once said, 'My life has been filled with terrible misfortune, most of which never happened.”
― Kristin Neff, Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself

“On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“Marco enters a city; he sees someone in a square living a life or an instant that could be his; he could now be in that man's place, if he had stopped in time, long ago; or if, long ago, at a crossroads, instead of taking one road he had taken the opposite one, and after long wandering he had come to be in the place of that man in the square. By now, from that real or hypothetical past of his, he is excluded; he cannot stop; he must go on to another city, where another of his pasts awaits him, or something perhaps that had been a possible future of his and is now someone else's present. Futures not achieved are only branches of the past: dead branches.”
― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

“This is a moment of suffering. Suffering is part of life. May I be kind to myself in this moment. May I give myself the compassion I need.”
― Kristin Neff, Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself