Status Updates From The Good Book: A Humanist B...

On greek cities and persian wars.

About the Persian wars.

On how to live and accept death and loss.

On accepting and appreciating old age and coming to terms with it in accordance with nature.

On loss.

Mostly lamentations, hope the Consolations chapter be better.

11. ‘Look back in memory and consider when you had a fixed plan, how few days have passed as you intended,
12. ‘How few when you were at your own disposal, how few when your face wore its natural expression, how few when your mind was unperturbed.
13. ‘Consider what little you have really achieved in so long a life,
19. ‘You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply,

5. To love what is made of nature is to love what changes and passes; and yet we must love, and so we must suffer.
6. Likewise to strive is to fail; even the taste of victory grows rank in the mouth, and success is fleeting;
7. And yet we must strive, for what is man if he does not strive; and so we must suffer.

16. ‘To seek the good is the first demand we should make upon ourselves;
17. ‘But next to the good, and to it alone, the greatest of all things is friendship.’

Chapter 10
1. The qualities we ought to look for in choosing friends are firmness, stability and constancy
Chapter 11
1. ‘What is the quality to look for as a promise of stability and permanence in friendship? Loyalty.
2. ‘We should also look for simplicity, a sociable disposition, and a sympathetic nature, moved by what moves us

9. ‘For we learn then, if we are brave, the power of mind, which is the greatest thing in man; of how, though man is small before nature, his mind can encompass all nature,
10. ‘In thinking of it, and singing about it, searching it in science, and celebrating it in poetry.
Chapter 15
1. Charicles said, ‘You remind us that reading profits most when, beside the book, you have someone with whom to talk of it.

33. ‘In life reason is the pilot, law is the light it steers by, wisdom is knowing that the law comes from nature; and reason is nature’s gift to man.
34. ‘Man has neither claws to fight with nor a furred pelt to abide the winter, but may rule the clawed and furred if he will.’

4. What other master, then, do you wait for, to throw upon that the delay of reforming yourself? You are no longer a child, but an adult.
5. If, therefore, you will be negligent and slothful, and always add procrastination to procrastination, purpose to purpose, and delay day after day until you will attend to yourself,

On the ways towards wisdom.

3:20 "Philosophy may help us gather up what might otherwise pass unregarded, for philosophy is the microscope of thought;"
4:08. "Wisdom is the recognition of consequences, a respect
for causality and the profit in foresight".
4:09. "Wisdom lies in bringing the past to serve the future, and
in opening one’s ears to hear the voices of the past".

I have FINALLY slain this dragon! After 11 years.

Battles of Maraton and Thermopylae

"23. It is nothing less than science, mankind’s greatest endeavour, greatest achievement, and greatest promise:
24. If only humanity will be wise in its use
WISDOM
5. The mighty man is he who conquers himself;
8. But the wise man is he who learns from all men.
15. And of things they have not seen, ‘I have not seen’.
4. But those who wish to learn more, even if they know
nothing, they are wise."