When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil.
But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own...
And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together...
Date Recorded: 11/17/2023
Concentrate every minute… on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions.
Yes, you can— if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable.
You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life?
Date Recorded: 11/18/2023
You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.
Date Recorded: 11/19/2023
What is divine deserves our respect because it is good; what is human deserves our affection because it is like us. And our pity too, sometimes, for its inability to tell good from bad- as terrible a blindness as the kind that can't tell white from black.
Date Recorded: 11/20/2023
Even if you’re going to live three thousand more years, or ten times that, remember: you cannot lose another life than the one you’re living now, or live another one than the one you’re losing. The longest amounts to the same as the shortest.
The present is the same for everyone; its loss is the same for everyone; and it should be clear that a brief instant is all that is lost. For you can’t lose either the past or the future; how could you lose what you don’t have?
Date Recorded: 11/21/2023
Don’t waste the rest of your time here worrying about other people—unless it affects the common good. It will keep you from doing anything useful.
You’ll be too preoccupied with what so-and-so is doing, and why, and what they’re saying, and what they’re thinking, and what they’re up to, and all the other things that throw you off and keep you from focusing on your own mind.
Date Recorded: 11/22/2023
You need to avoid certain things in your train of thought: everything random, everything irrelevant. And certainly everything self-important or malicious.
You need to get used to winnowing your thoughts, so that if someone says, "What are you thinking about?" you can respond at once (and truthfully) that you are thinking this or thinking that.
Date Recorded: 11/23/2023
…then don't make room for anything … that might lead you astray, tempt you off the road, and leave you unable to devote yourself completely to achieving the goodness that is uniquely yours. It would be wrong for anything to stand between you and attaining goodness…
Date Recorded: 11/25/2023
Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already or is impossible to see.
Date Recorded: 11/27/2023
To the stand-bys above, add this one: always to define whatever it is we perceive—to trace its outline—so we can see what it really is: its substance. Stripped bare. As a whole. Unmodified. And to call it by its name—the thing itself and its components, to which it will eventually return.
Date Recorded: 12/2/2023
If you do the job in a principled way, with diligence, energy and patience, if you keep yourself free of distractions, and keep the spirit inside you undamaged, as if you might have to give it back at any moment–
If you can embrace this without fear or expectation–can find fulfillment in what you’re doing now, as Nature intended, and in superhuman truthfulness (every word, every utterance)–then your life will be happy.
No one can prevent that.
Date Recorded: 12/4/2023
To welcome with affection what is sent by fate. Not to stain or disturb the spirit within him with a mess of false beliefs. Instead, to preserve it faithfully, by calmly obeying God—saying nothing untrue, doing nothing unjust. And if the others don’t acknowledge it—this life lived with simplicity, humility, cheerfulness—he doesn’t resent them for it, and isn’t deterred from following the road where it leads: to the end of life. An end to be approached in purity, in serenity, in acceptance, in peaceful unity with what must be.
Date Recorded: 12/12/2023
Above all, no strain and no stress. Be straightforward. Look at things like a man, like a human being, like a citizen, like a mortal. And among the things you turn to, these two:
i. That things have no hold on the soul. They stand there unmoving, outside it. Disturbance comes only from within — from our own perceptions.
ii. That everything you see will soon alter and cease to exist. Think of how many changes you’ve already seen.
"The world is nothing but change. Our life is only perception."
Date Recorded: 12/15/2023
That sort of person is bound to do that. You might as well resent a fig tree for secreting juice.
Date Recorded: 12/19/2023
Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been.
Date Recorded: 12/23/2023
The tranquility that comes when you stop caring what they say. Or think, or do. Only what you do.
Date Recorded: 12/26/2023
People who are excited by posthumous fame forget that the people who remember them will soon die too. And those after them in turn. Until their memory, passed from one to another like a candle flame, gutters and goes out.
Date Recorded: 1/2/2024
Beautiful things of any kind are beautiful in themselves and sufficient to themselves. Praise is extraneous. The object of praise remains what it was—no better and no worse. This applies, I think, even to “beautiful” things in ordinary life—physical objects, artworks.
Does anything genuinely beautiful need supplementing? No more than justice does—or truth, or kindness, or humility. Are any of those improved by being praised? Or damaged by contempt? Is an emerald suddenly flawed if no one admires it? Or gold, or ivory, or purple? Lyres? Knives? Flowers? Bushes?
Date Recorded: 1/4/2024
If you seek tranquility, do less. Or (more accurately) do what’s essential — what the logos of a social being requires, and in the requisite way. Which brings a double satisfaction: to do less, better.
Because most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time, and more tranquility. Ask yourself at every moment, "Is this necessary?"
Date Recorded: 1/9/2024
A key point to bear in mind: The value of attentiveness varies in proportion to its object. You’re better off not giving the small things more time than they deserve.
Date Recorded: 1/11/2024
Everything fades so quickly, turns into legend, and soon oblivion covers it.
Then what should we work for?
Only this: proper understanding; unselfish action; truthful speech. A resolve to accept whatever happens as necessary and familiar, flowing like water from that same source and spring.
Date Recorded: 1/16/2024
Constant awareness that everything is born from change.
Date Recorded: 1/18/2024
Nothing that goes on in anyone else's mind can harm you. Nor can the shifts and changes in the world around you.
--Then where is harm to be found?
In your capacity to see it. Stop doing that and everything will be fine.
Date Recorded: 1/23/2024
At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: "I have to go to work — as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for — the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?"
So you were born to feel “nice”? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?
...You don’t love yourself enough. Or you’d love your nature too, and what it demands of you.
Date Recorded: 1/25/2024
If an action or utterance is appropriate, then it’s appropriate for you. Don’t be put off by other people’s comments and criticism. If it’s right to say or do it, then it’s the right thing for you to do or say.
The others obey their own lead, follow their own impulses. Don’t be distracted. Keep walking. Follow your own nature, and follow Nature—along the road they share.
Date Recorded: 1/30/2024
Not to feel exasperated, or defeated, or despondent because your days aren’t packed with wise and moral actions. But to get back up when you fail, to celebrate behaving like a human — however imperfectly — and fully embrace the pursuit that you’ve embarked on.
Date Recorded: 2/1/2024
The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts.
Date Recorded: 2/6/2024
It is crazy to want what is impossible. And impossible for the wicked not to do so.
Date Recorded: 2/8/2024
Things have no hold on the soul. They have no access to it, cannot move or direct it. It is moved and directed by itself alone. It takes the things before it and interprets them as it sees fit.
Date Recorded: 2/13/2024
In a sense, people are our proper occupation. Our job is to do them good and put up with them.
Date Recorded: 2/15/2024
The impediment to action advances action.
What stands in the way becomes the way.
Date Recorded: 2/20/2024
So other people hurt me? That's their problem. Their character and actions are not mine. What is done to me is ordained by nature, what I do by my own.
Date Recorded: 2/22/2024
The mind is the ruler of the soul. It should remain unstirred by agitations of the flesh - gentle and violent ones alike. Not mingling with them, but fencing itself off and keeping those feelings in their place. When they make their way into your thoughts, through the sympathetic link between mind and body, don’t try to resist the sensation. The sensation is natural. But don’t let the mind start in with judgments, calling it “good” or “bad.”
Date Recorded: 2/27/2024
Honor and revere the gods, treat human beings as they deserve, be tolerant with others and strict with yourself. Remember, nothing belongs to you but your flesh and blood—and nothing else is under your control.
Date Recorded: 2/29/2024
Change and flux constantly remake the world, just as the incessant progression of time remakes eternity.
Date Recorded: 3/5/2024
Then what is to be prized?
An audience clapping? No. No more than the clacking of their tongues. Which is all that public praise amounts to — a clacking of tongues.
So we throw out people’s recognition. What’s left for us to prize?
Date Recorded: 3/7/2024
I think it's this: to do (and not do) what we were designed for. That’s the goal of all trades, all arts, and what each of them aims at: that the thing they create should do what it was designed to do.
Date Recorded: 3/12/2024
Not to assume it's impossible because you find it hard. But to recognize that if it's humanly possible, you can do it too.
Date Recorded: 3/14/2024
I do what is mine to do; the rest doesn’t disturb me.
Date Recorded: 3/21/2024
When you deal with irrational animals, with things and circumstances, be generous and straightforward. You are rational; they are not. When you deal with fellow human beings, behave as one.
Date Recorded: 3/28/2024
Think how much is going on inside you every second – in your soul, in your body. Why should it astonish you that so much more – everything that happens in that all-embracing unity, the world–is happening at the same time?
Date Recorded: 4/9/2024
Remember — your responsibilities can be broken down into individual parts as well. Concentrate on those, and finish the job methodically — without getting stirred up or meeting anger with anger.
Date Recorded: 4/12/2024
Nothing has meaning to my mind except its own actions. Which are within its own control. And it’s only the immediate ones that matter. Its past and future actions too are meaningless.
Date Recorded: 4/16/2024
Keep reminding yourself of the way things are connected, of their relatedness. All things are implicated in one another and in sympathy with each other. This event is the consequence of some other one.
Date Recorded: 4/18/2024
The things ordained for you – teach yourself to be at one with those. And to the people who share them with you – treat them with love. With real love.
Date Recorded: 4/23/2024
All of us are working on the same project. Some consciously, with understanding; some without knowing it.
...Some of us work in one way, and some in others. And those who complain and try to obstruct and thwart things - they help as much as anyone. The world needs them as well.
So make up your mind who you'll choose to work with. The force that directs all things will make good use of you regardless - will put you on its payroll and put you to work.
Date Recorded: 5/7/2024
When you need encouragement, think of the qualities the people around you have: this one’s energy, that one’s modesty, another’s generosity, and so on. Nothing is as encouraging as when virtues are visibly embodied in the people around us, when we’re practically showered with them.
It’s good to keep this in mind.
Date Recorded: 5/9/2024
You don’t have to turn this into something. It doesn’t have to upset you. Things can’t shape our decisions by themselves.
Date Recorded: 5/14/2024
Practice really hearing what people say. Do your best to get inside their minds.
Date Recorded: 5/16/2024
What injures the hive injures the bee.
Date Recorded: 5/21/2024
I can control my thoughts as necessary; then how can I be troubled? What is outside my mind means nothing to it.
Date Recorded: 5/23/2024
Focus on what is said when you speak and on what results from each action. Know what the one aims at, and what the other means.
Date Recorded: 5/28/2024
Don’t be ashamed to need help. Like a soldier storming a wall, you have a mission to accomplish. And if you’ve been wounded and you need a comrade to pull you up? So what?
Date Recorded: 5/30/2024
It doesn't hurt me unless I interpret its happening as harmful to me. I can choose not to.
Date Recorded: 6/4/2024
No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be good. Like gold or emerald or purple repeating to itself, "No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be emerald, my color undiminished."
Date Recorded: 6/6/2024
Frightened of change? But what can exist without it?
Date Recorded: 6/11/2024
To feel affection for people even when they make mistakes is uniquely human. You can do it, if you simply recognize: that they’re human too, that they act out of ignorance, against their will, and that you’ll both be dead before long. And, above all, that they haven’t really hurt you. They haven’t diminished your ability to choose.
Date Recorded: 6/13/2024
Treat what you don’t have as nonexistent. Look at what you have, the things you value most, and think of how much you’d crave them if you didn’t have them. But be careful. Don’t feel such satisfaction that you start to overvalue them — that it would upset you to lose them.
Date Recorded: 6/18/2024
Wash yourself clean. With simplicity, with humility, with indifference to everything but right and wrong.
Care for other human beings. Follow God.
Date Recorded: 6/20/2024
"And why should we feel anger at the world?
As if the world would notice!"
Date Recorded: 6/26/2024
Everywhere, at each moment, you have the option:
Date Recorded: 6/27/2024
Don't pay attention to other people's minds. Look straight ahead, where nature is leading you—nature in general, through the things that happen to you; and your own nature, through your own actions.
Date Recorded: 7/2/2024
Look at who they really are, the people whose approval you long for, and what their minds are really like. Then you won’t blame the ones who make mistakes they can’t help, and you won’t feel a need for their approval. You will have seen the sources of both - their judgments and their actions.
Date Recorded: 7/9/2024
For times when you feel pain:
See that it doesn’t disgrace you, or degrade your intelligence — doesn’t keep it from acting rationally or unselfishly.
And in most cases what Epicurus said should help: that pain is neither unbearable nor unending, as long as you keep in mind its limits and don’t magnify them in your imagination.
Date Recorded: 7/23/2024
Take care that you don't treat inhumanity as it treats human beings.
Date Recorded: 7/25/2024
Nature did not blend things so inextricably that you can't draw your own boundaries — place your own well-being in your own hands. It's quite possible to be a good man without anyone realizing it. Remember that.
Date Recorded: 7/30/2024
To live life in peace, immune to all compulsion. Let them scream whatever they want. ...How would any of that stop you from keeping your mind calm — reliably sizing up what’s around you — and ready to make good use of whatever happens?
Date Recorded: 8/1/2024
Perfection of character: to live your last day, every day, without frenzy, or sloth, or pretense.
Date Recorded: 8/8/2024
It's silly to try to escape other people's faults. They are inescapable. Just try to escape your own.
Date Recorded: 8/15/2024
For every action, ask: How does it affect me? Could I change my mind about it?
Date Recorded: 8/20/2024
The first step: Don’t be anxious. Nature controls it all.
The second step: Concentrate on what you have to do. Fix your eyes on it. Remind yourself that your task is to be a good human being; remind yourself what nature demands of people. Then do it, without hesitation, and speak the truth as you see it. But with kindness. With humility. Without hypocrisy.
Date Recorded: 9/17/2024
And progress for a rational mind means not accepting falsehood or uncertainty in its perceptions, making unselfish actions its only aim, seeking and shunning only the things it has control over, embracing what nature demands of it — the nature in which it participates, as the leaf’s nature does in the tree’s.
Date Recorded: 10/22/2024
Don't be overheard complaining about life at court. Not even to yourself.
Date Recorded: 11/5/2024