Alexander Rios

“Without the reference points of pleasure and pain, people invent imaginary and abstract standards for ethics that are divorced from reality and generate vast amounts of unnecessary suffering. Pleasure is the only >real< ethical guide. It returns our conversations about ethics to the natural context where these conversations belong: the well-being of sentient beings.”
― Hiram Crespo, Tending the Epicurean Garden

“All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher.”
― Titus Lucretius Carus, On the Nature of Things: De rerum natura

“A man leaves his great house because he's bored
With life at home, and suddenly returns,
Finding himself no happier abroad.
He rushes off to his villa driving like mad,
You'ld think he's going to a house on fire,
And yawns before he's put his foot inside,
Or falls asleep and seeks oblivion,
Or even rushes back to town again.
So each man flies from himself (vain hope, because
It clings to him the more closely against his will)
And hates himself because he is sick in mind
And does not know the cause of his disease.”
― Lucretius

“Is it intelligent to make ourselves miserable while living in the past, haunted by memories while being inexorably swallowed by them? Whenever we reminisce about our past life, we are advised in our tradition to be in a state of gratefulness. Be mindful of nurturing unnecessary grief and staying stuck in old pain.”
― Hiram Crespo, Tending the Epicurean Garden