Isabella > Recent Status Updates

- Who is my master? Whoever controls what you desire or dislike

- The true man is revealed in difficult times

- When someone is properly grounded in life, they shouldn’t have to look outside themselves for approval
- And who exactly are these people that you want to be admired by? Aren’t they the same people you are in the habit of calling crazy? And is this your life ambition then— to win the approval of lunatics?

- We do not abandon any discipline for despair of ever being the best in it
- Instead of thinking up protests, wouldn’t it be easier to just wipe your nose?
- Ask me what the real good in man’s case is, and I can only say that it is the right kind of moral character

- Look at the number of things we buy because others have bought them, or because they’re in most people’s houses
- There are persons who spread vices, and association with them does a lot of damage. For even if its success is not immediate, it leaves a seed in the mind

- People’s speech matches their lives
- All vices are at odds with nature
- Devotion to what is right is simple, devotion to what is wrong is complex
- It is essential to make oneself used to putting up with little

- Every person, without exception has someone to whom he confides everything that is confided to himself
- Whatever happens was bound to happen
- One can do nothing better than endure what cannot be cured
- Everything we shall suffer is a strand
- Let me indicate here how men can prove that their words are their own. Let them put their preaching into practice

- All this hurrying from place to place won’t bring you any relief, if you are traveling in the company of your own emotions, followed by your troubles all the way
- If you wish to be stripped of your vices, you must get right away from the examples others set of them
- Move to better company

- Whatever happens is never as serious as rumor makes it out to be
- No one has power over us, when death is within our own power
- If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you are needing is not to be in a different place, but to be a different person

- Everything hangs on one’s thinking
- A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is
- Philosophy has taught men to worship what is divine, to love what is human

- Whatever can happen at any time can happen today
- I am not afraid of coming to an end, this being the same as never having begun, nor a transition. For I shall never be in confinement quite so cramped anywhere else, as I am here.

- You’ve as many enemies as you’ve slaves
- Straightforwardness and simplicity are in keeping with goodness
- The fact that a person is living for nobody does not automatically mean that he is living for himself
- In our tears we are trying to find means of proving that we feel the loss. We are not being governed by our grief, but parading it

- There is great danger in immediately throwing out what you have not digested

- If you don’t act right, shun the action itself. But if you do, why are you afraid of those who censure you wrongly?
- Unless you perfectly understand the principle from which anyone acts, how should you know if he acts ill?

- If anyone tells you that such a person speaks ill of you, don’t make excuses about what is said of you. But answer, “well he does not know my other faults, else he would not have mentioned only these”

- To me, all omens are lucky if I will them so
- Whichever of these things happens, it is in my control to derive advantage from it
- Who can give to another, the things which he has not himself?

- Remove aversion from all things at are not in our control
- Men are disturbed not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things
- If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid with regard to external things, do not wish to be thought to know anything

- Not knowing is true knowledge, presuming to know is a disease
- If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to
- The hard and stuff will be broken, the soft and supple will prevail
- Men who need to prove their point aren’t wise

- When nothing is done, nothing is left undone
- Knowing how to yield is strength
- All streams flow to the sea because it is lower than they are

- The gentlest thing in the world overcomes the hardest thing in the world
- If you look to others for fulfillment, you will never truly be fulfilled
- Be content with what you have. Rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you
- There is no greater illusion than fear

- Let your workings remain a mystery, just show people the results
- When there is no desire, all things are at peace
- The master views the parts with compassion, because he understands the whole
- True clarity seems obscure. The greatest love seems indifferent. The greatest wisdom seems childish.