Make The Best Use Of What Is In Your Power

Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens. Some things are up to us and some things are not up to us. Our opinions are up to us, and our impulses, desires, aversions — in short, whatever is our own doing. Our bodies are not up to us, nor are our possessions, our reputations, or our public offices, or, that is, whatever is not our own doing.

~Epictetus

This, Now This

The river
where you set
your foot just now
is gone—
those waters
giving way to this,
now this.

~Heraclitus

The Realized Person

The realized person uses their mind like a mirror, neither anticipating nor welcoming anything, responding to everything and retraining nothing. Such a person is thus able to succeed in all things and remain unharmed.

~ Chuang-tzu

The Evolution of Man

Artist: Kamille Corry

The evolution of man is the evolution of his will, and 'will’ cannot evolve involuntarily.

~Georges Ivanovich Gurdjieff

Everything

Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is just opinion.

~Democritus

Wisdom

One thing I know, that I know nothing. This is the source of my wisdom.

~Socrates

Gullibility

Those who make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

~Voltaire

A Philosopher's Words

It takes a wise man to discover a wise man.

                                                    ~Diogenes

I Seek the Truth

If anyone can show me, and prove to me, that I am wrong in thought or deed, I will gladly change. I seek the truth, which never yet hurt anybody. It is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance which does harm.

~Marcus Aurelius

A lunatic is someone who has lost everything but his reason.

                                                                                 ~G. K. Chesterton

Existence

Has existence then a significance at all?—the question that will require a couple of centuries even to be heard in all its profundity.

~Friedrich Nietzsche

Change

It should be borne in mind that there is nothing more difficult to arrange, more doubtful of success, and more dangerous to carry through than initiating change.

The innovator makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old order, and only lukewarm support is forthcoming from those who would prosper under the new.

~Niccolo Machiavelli, in The Prince

The Mystical

The mystical is not how the world is, but that it is.

~Ludwig Wittgenstein

Great Events

The greatest events are not our noisiest, but our stillest hours.

~Friedrich Nietzsche

Freedom

It is not the Buddha who delivers men, but he teaches them to deliver themselves, even as he has delivered himself.

---Dr. Oldenburg, A German Philosopher---

Your Choice (Freedom)

The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you think, and what you do is who you become.

---Heraclitus---