Alexander Rios

“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

“Air, I should explain, becomes wind when it is agitated.”
― Lucretius, On the Nature of Things

“Ingratitude is a bad habit by which we needlessly punish ourselves. When we no longer have the things we enjoy, we miss them and long for the past, long for what is not there, long to escape. Being always mindfully unhappy and mindlessly happy is not a prudent way to live. The Epicurean must train himself to be mindfully happy.”
― Hiram Crespo, Tending the Epicurean Garden

“At this stage you must admit that whatever is seen to be sentient is nevertheless composed of atoms that are insentient. The phenomena open to our observation do not contradict this conclusion or conflict with it. Rather they lead us by the hand and compel us to believe that the animate is born, as I maintain, of the insentient”
― Lucretius