Isaias Javier

“The fixed idea may also be perceived as 'maxim', 'principle', 'standpoint', and the like. Archimedes,86 to move the earth, asked for a standpoint outside it. Men sought continually for this standpoint, and every one seized upon it as well as he was able. This foreign standpoint is the world oj mind, of ideas, thoughts, concepts, essences; it is heaven. Heaven is the 'standpoint' from which the earth is moved, earthly doings surveyed and - despised. To assure to themselves heaven, to occupy the heavenly standpoint firmly and for ever - how painfully and tirelessly humanity struggled for this!”
― Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own

“And that is the very thing that alarms me,”
returned Dantes. “Man does not appear to me to be intended to enjoy felicity so unmixed; happiness is like the enchanted palaces we read of in our childhood, where fierce, fiery dragons defend the entrance and approach; and monsters of all shapes and kinds, requiring to be overcome ere victory is ours. I own that I am lost in wonder to find myself promoted to an
honor of which I feel myself unworthy–that of being the husband of Mercedes.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“The worst sickness of men tends to originate in the sentimental way they try to combat their sicknesses. What seems like an easy cure, in the long run produces something worse than what it's supposed to overcome. Fake consolations always have to be paid for with a general and profound worsening of the original complaint.”
― Frederick Nietzsche

“The pain that you create now is always some form of nonacceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgment. On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity. The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment, and this in turn depends on how strongly you are identified with your mind. The mind always seeks to deny the Now and to escape from it. In other words, the more you are identified with your mind, the more you suffer. Or you may put it like this: the more you are able to honor and accept the Now, the more you are free of pain, of suffering - and free of the egoic mind. Why does the mind habitually deny or resist the Now? Because it cannot function and remain in control without time, which is past and future, so it perceives the timeless Now as threatening. Time and mind are in fact inseparable.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment