Waar niets aan te doen is moet men niet over spreken.
Read MoreAwareness Itself, Ajaan Fuang Jotiko
We all want happiness but for the most part we are not interested in building the CAUSES for happiness. All we want are the RESULTS. But if we don't take interest in the causes, how are the results going to come our way?
Read MoreSchuld en Boete, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“Men is nog tot geen enkele waarheid doorgedrongen zonder eerst veertien maal of zelfs honderdveertien maal onzin te hebben gebazeld, en als die onzin maar op een eigen, op persoonlijke manier tot stand komt, dan verdient dat gebazel ten slotte nog alle waardering. Maar wij spelen niet eens klaar, met ons eigen verstand en op onze eigen manier onzin te bazelen!”
Read MoreNotes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“Er is maar één reden, maar één, waarom de mens opzettelijk, welbewust iets kan wensen dat zelfs schadelijk is, iets stoms, zelfs iets ontzettend stoms, en wel om het recht te hebben zichzelf iets ontzettends stoms toe te wensen en niet gebonden te zijn door de verplichting alleen verstandige dingen te willen. [...] omdat het in ieder geval in stand houdt wat het voornaamste en dierbaarste voor ons is, namelijk onze persoonlijkheid en onze individualiteit."
Read MoreChange: Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution, Paul Watzlawick
Real IS what a sufficiently large number of people have agreed to CALL real - except that this fact is usually forgotten; the agreed-upon definition is reified (made into a "thing") and is eventually experienced as that objective reality "out there" which apparently only a madman can fail to see.
Read MoreFood of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge, Terrence McKenna
Many people yearn to be introduced to the facts concerning their true identity. Not to know one's true identity is to be a mad, disensouled thing - a golem. And, indeed this image, sickeningly Orwellian, applies to the mass of human beings now living in the high-tech industrial democracies. Their authenticity lies in their ability to obey and follow mass style changes that are conveyed through the media. Immersed in junk food, trash media, and cryptofascist politics, they are condemned to toxic lives of low awareness. Sedated by the prescripted daily television fix, they are a living dead, lost to all but the act of consuming.
Read MoreThe Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus: A Roman Slave
WOULD YOU HAVE A GREAT EMPIRE? RULE OVER YOURSELF!
Read MoreDiscourses and Selected Writings, Epictetus
In life our first job is this, to divide and distinguish things into two categories: externals I cannot control, but the choices I make with regard to them I do control.
Read MoreAwareness through Movement, Moshe Feldenkrais
Individuals tend to identify their self-images with their value to society. [...] In this way society comes to be made of persons increasingly alike in their ways, behaviors, and aims. [...] there are few individuals who view themselves without reference to the value attributed to them by society. [...] so the individual tries to smooth out his biological peculiarities by alienating himself from his inherent needs. He strains to fit himself into the round hole that he now actively desires to fill.
Read MoreTales of Ordinary Madness, Charles Bukowski
to whom it may concern: please phone me for appointments when you want to see me. I will not answer unsolicited knocks upon the door. I need time to do my work. please understand that what keeps me alive will make me a better person toward and for you when we finally meet under easy and unstrained conditions.
Read MoreThe Devil At Large: Erica Jong on Henry Miller
First we must see the problem inside ourselves; then we must see it in society; then we must fight to change it.
Read MoreBlack Spring, Henry Miller
What is a hero? Primarily, someone who has conquered his fears.
Read MoreThe Art of Learning, Josh Waitzkin
I believe an appreciation for simplicity, the everyday - the ability to dive deeply into the banal and discover life's hidden richness - is where success, let alone, happiness, emerges.
Read MoreHenry Miller The Paris Years, Brassaï
I don't want to progress, I want to regress.
Read MoreThe Art of Wordly Wisdom, Baltasar Gracián
He is twice great who has all the perfections in the opinion of all except of himself; he attains applause by two opposite paths.
Read MoreSeeking Wisdom, Charlie Munger
Remember what you want to achieve.
Read MorePhilosophy as a Way of Life, Pierre Hadot
The normal, natural state of men should be wisdom, for wisdom is nothing more than the vision of things as they are, the vision of the cosmos as it is in the light of reason, and wisdom is also nothing more than the mode of being and living that should correspond to this vision.
Read MoreWisdom of the Heart, Henry Miller
"Normality is the paradise of escapeologists, for it is a fixation concept, pure and simple. It is better to stand alone and to feel quite normal about our abnormality, doing nothing whatever about it, except what needs to be done in order to be oneself."
Read MoreThe Discourses of Epictetus
If there is anyone who renounces externals and attends instead to their character, cultivating and perfecting it so that it agrees with nature, making it honest and trustworthy, elevated, free, unchecked and undeterred; and if they've learned that whoever desires or avoids things outside their control cannot be free or faithful, and if from the moment they get up in the morning they adhere to their ideals, eating and bathing like a person of integrity, putting their principles into practice every situation they face - that is where you will see true progress embodied, and find someone who has not wasted their time making the journey here from home.
Read MoreThe Bed of Procrustes, Nassim Nicholas Taleb
You will be civilized on the day you can spend a long period doing nothing, learning nothing, and improving nothing, without feeling the slightest amount of guilt.
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