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“I want to see everything now. And while none of it will be me when it goes in, after a while it'll all gather together inside and it'll be me. Look at the world out there, my God, my God, look at it out there, outside me, out there beyond my face and the only way to really touch it is to put it where it's finally me, where it's in the blood, where it pumps around a thousand times ten thousand a day. I'll get hold of it so it'll never run off. I'll hold onto the world so tight some day. I've got a finger on it now; that's a beginning.”
―
―
“The world was bankrupted of ten million fine actions the night he passed on.”
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“17. Human life. Duration: momentary. Nature: changeable. Perception: dim. Condition of Body: decaying. Soul: spinning around. Fortune: unpredictable. Lasting Fame: uncertain. Sum Up: The body and its parts are a river, the soul a dream and mist, life is warfare and a journey far from home, lasting reputation is oblivion. Then what can guide us? Only philosophy. Which means making sure that the power within stays safe and free from assault, superior to pleasure and pain, doing nothing randomly or dishonestly and with imposture, not dependent on anyone else’s doing something or not doing it. And making sure that it accepts what happens and what it is dealt as coming from the same place it came from. And above all, that it accepts death in a cheerful spirit, as nothing but the dissolution of the elements from which each living thing is composed. If it doesn’t hurt the individual elements to change continually into one another, why are people afraid of all of them changing and separating? It’s a natural thing. And nothing natural is evil.”
― Meditations
― Meditations
“Remember two things: i. that everything has always been the same, and keeps recurring, and it makes no difference whether you see the same things recur in a hundred years or two hundred, or in an infinite period; ii. that the longest-lived and those who will die soonest lose the same thing. The present is all that they can give up, since that is all you have, and what you do not have you cannot lose.”
― Meditations
― Meditations
“Hippocrates cured many illnesses—and then fell ill and
died. The Chaldaeans predicted the deaths of many others; in
due course their own hour arrived. Alexander, Pompey,
Caesar—who utterly destroyed so many cities, cut down so
many thousand foot and horse in battle—they too departedthis life. Heraclitus often told us the world would end in fire.
But it was moisture that carried him off; he died smeared
with cowshit. Democritus was killed by ordinary vermin,
Socrates by the human kind.
And?
You boarded, you set sail, you’ve made the passage. Time
to disembark. If it’s for another life, well, there’s nowhere
without gods on that side either. If to nothingness, then you no
longer have to put up with pain and pleasure, or go on
dancing attendance on this battered crate, your body—so
much inferior to that which serves it.
One is mind and spirit, the other earth and garbage.”
― Meditations
died. The Chaldaeans predicted the deaths of many others; in
due course their own hour arrived. Alexander, Pompey,
Caesar—who utterly destroyed so many cities, cut down so
many thousand foot and horse in battle—they too departedthis life. Heraclitus often told us the world would end in fire.
But it was moisture that carried him off; he died smeared
with cowshit. Democritus was killed by ordinary vermin,
Socrates by the human kind.
And?
You boarded, you set sail, you’ve made the passage. Time
to disembark. If it’s for another life, well, there’s nowhere
without gods on that side either. If to nothingness, then you no
longer have to put up with pain and pleasure, or go on
dancing attendance on this battered crate, your body—so
much inferior to that which serves it.
One is mind and spirit, the other earth and garbage.”
― Meditations
Joseph’s 2025 Year in Books
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