Quote collection
777 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Let it be your constant method to look into the design of people's actions, and see what they would be at, as often as it is practicable; and to make this custom the more significant, practice it first upon yourself."
"If souls survive death for all eternity, how can the heavens hold them all? Or for that matter, how can the earth hold all the bodies that have been buried in it? The answers are the same. Just as on earth, with the passage of time, decaying and transmogrified corpses make way for the newly dead, so souls released into the heavens, after a season of flight, begin to break up, burn, and be absorbed back into the womb of reason, leaving room for souls just beginning to fly. This is the answer for those who believe that souls survive death."
"Live with the gods. And he does so who constantly shows them that his soul is satisfied with what is assigned to him."
"Limit time to the present. Meditate upon your last hour."
"Nothing befalls a man except what is in his nature to endure."
"Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of thy mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts."
"Give your heart to the trade you have learnt, and draw refreshment from it. Let the rest of your days be spent as one who has whole-heartedly committed his all to the gods and is thenceforth no man's master or slave."
"How ridiculous not to flee from one's own wickedness, which is possible, yet endeavor to flee from another's which is not."
"He who fears death either fears the loss of sensation or a different kind of sensation. But if thou shalt have no sensation, neither wilt thou feel any harm; and if thou shalt acquire another kind of sensation, thou wilt be a different kind of living being and thou wilt not cease to live."
"People who labor all their lives but have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse toward are wasting their time-even when hard at work."
"Consider in what condition both in body and soul a man should be when he is overtaken by death; and consider the shortness of life, the boundless abyss of time past and future, the feebleness of all matter."
"And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last."
"One universe made up all that is; and one God in it all, and one principle of being, and one law, the reason shared by all thinking creatures, and one truth."
"All things of the body stream away like a river, all things of the mind are dreams and delusion; life is warfare, and a visit to a strange land; the only lasting fame is oblivion."
"Frightened of change? But what can exist without it? What's closer to nature's heart? Can you take a hot bath and leave the firewood as it was? Eat food without transforming it? Can any vital process take place without something being changed? Can't you see? It's just the same with you - and just as vital to nature."
"How easy it is to repel and release every impression which is troublesome and immediately to be tranquil."
"Remind oneself continually of one of those who practiced virtue in days gone by."
"Suppose that thou hast detached thyself from the natural unity... yet here there is this beautiful provision, that it is in thy power again to unite thyself. God has allowed this to no other part, after it has been separated and cut asunder, to come together again. ...he has distinguished man, for he has put it in his power not to be separated at all from the universal ...he has allowed him to be returned and to be united and to resume his place as a part."
"Nature which governs the whole will soon change all things which you see, and out of their substance will make other things and again other things... in order that the world may be ever new."
"Does a man shrink from change? Why, what can come into being save by change?"