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Everyone has something in his nature which, if he were to express it openly, would of necessity give offense.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

IMAGE: Eduard von Grützner, Mephisto (1895)

#goethe #philosophy

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We will all face our quotas of pleasure and pain, and the only thing that will make a difference is how we respond to them. . . .

#stoicism #seneca #moral letters to lucilius #philosophy

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You look at trees and called them ‘trees,’ and probably you do not think twice about the word. You call a star a ‘star,’ and think nothing more of it. But you must remember that these words, ‘tree,’ ‘star,’ were (in their original forms) names given to these objects by people with very different views from yours. To you, a tree is simply a vegetable organism, and a star simply a ball of inanimate matter moving along a mathematical course. But the first men to talk of ‘trees’ and ‘stars’ saw things very differently. To them, the world was alive with mythological beings. They saw the stars as living silver, bursting into flame in answer to the eternal music. They saw the sky as a jeweled tent, and the earth as the womb whence all living things have come. To them, the whole of creation was ‘myth-woven and elf patterned’.

J.R.R. Tolkien, from ‘Mythopoeia’  (via 89words)

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by Onidaiko

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Kevin Pages l  Fagradalsfjall, Iceland

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Am I getting it wrong, or am I worrying too much, which is yet another way of getting it wrong? . . .

#stoicism #seneca #philosophy

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Delphic Maxims 53 

Σοφοῖς χρῶ 

Consult the wise 

IMAGE: Giorgione, Three Philosophers (c. 1509) 

#stoicism #delphic maxims #philosophy

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Stockdale on Stoicism 43 

Prison life became a crazy mixture of an old regime and a new one.

The old was the political prison routine mainly for dissenters and domestic enemies of the state. It was designed and run by old-fashioned Third-World Communists of the Ho Chi Minh cut. It revolved around the idea of "repentance" for "crimes" of anti-social behavior. American prisoners, street criminals, and domestic political enemies of the state were all in the same prison. 

We never saw a "POW camp" like in the movies. The Communist jail was part psychiatric clinic and part reform school. North Vietnamese protocol called for making all their inmates demonstrate shame, bowing to all guards, heads low, never looking at the sky. It meant frequent sessions with your interrogator, if for no other reason than to check your attitude. And if judged "wrong," then you were maybe down the torture chute of confession of guilt, of apology, and then the inevitable payoff—the atonement. 

The new regime, superimposed on the above, was for Americans only. It was a propaganda factory, supervised by young, English-speaking, bureaucratic army officers with quotas to fill, quotas set by the political arm of the government: press interviews with visiting left-wing Americans, propaganda films to shoot (starring intimidated people they called "American Air Pirates"), and so on. 

—from James B. Stockdale, Master of My Fate: A Stoic Philosopher in a Hanoi Prison 

#stoicism #james stockdale #philosophy

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Sayings of Ramakrishna 241 

So long as one does not become simple like a child, one does not get Divine Illumination. 

Forget all the worldly knowledge that you have acquired, and become as ignorant about it as a child, and then you will get the knowledge of the True. 

IMAGE: Hugh Cameron, Buttercups and Daisies (1881) 

#ramakrishna #hinduism #philosophy

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There is the same nobility in both the common and the uncommon. . . .

#stoicism #seneca #moral letters to lucilius #philosophy

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The Shrine, 1895, John William Waterhouse

Medium: oil,canvas

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The healthy eye ought to see all visible things and not to say, "I wish for green things," for this is the condition of a diseased eye.  And the healthy hearing and smelling ought to be ready to perceive all that can be heard and smelled.  And the healthy stomach ought to be with respect to all food just as the mill with respect to all things which it is formed to grind.  And accordingly the healthy understanding ought to be prepared for everything which happens; but that which says, "Let my dear children live," and "Let all men praise whatever I may do," is an eye which seeks for green things, or teeth which seek for soft things. 

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 10.35 

#stoicism #marcus aurelius #philosophy

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Solvency is maintained by means of the national debt, on the principle, "If you will not lend me the money, how can I pay you?" 

—from Ralph Waldo Emerson, English Traits 

IMAGE: by James Gillray (1786) 

#ralph waldo emerson #philosophy

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We have done well if we have given love, and treated others with justice and kindness. All the rest is a wasted effort. . . .

#stoicism #seneca #philosophy

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Dhammapada 371 

Meditate, O Bhikshu, and be not heedless! 

Do not direct your thought to what gives pleasure, that you may not for your heedlessness have to swallow the red-hot iron ball in hell, and that you may not cry out when burning, "This is pain!" 

#dhammapada #buddhism #philosophy