Quotes About Tranquility

We are social creatures; we will be miserable if we try to cut off contact with other people. Therefore, if what we seek is tranquility, we should form and maintain relations with others. In doing so, though, we should be careful about whom we befriend. We should also, to the extent possible, avoid people whose values are corrupt, for fear that their values will contaminate ours. •

Rather, Stoic tranquility was a psychological state marked by the absence of negative emotions, such as grief, anger, and anxiety, and the presence of positive emotions, such as joy.

Stoicism, understood properly, is a cure for a disease. The disease in question is the anxiety, grief, fear, and various other negative emotions that plague humans and prevent them from experiencing a joyful existence. By practicing Stoic techniques, we can cure the disease and thereby gain tranquility.

Whereas most people valued fame and fortune,6 a Stoic's primary goal in life was to attain and then maintain tranquility—to avoid, that is, experiencing negative emotions while continuing to enjoy positive emotions.

The pursuit of virtue results in a degree of tranquility, which in turn makes it easier for us to pursue virtue.

someone who practices Stoic principles "must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys." Furthermore, compared to these joys, pleasures of the flesh are "paltry and trivial and fleeting."6

Stoic tranquility was a psychological state marked by the absence of negative emotions, such as grief, anger, and anxiety, and the presence of positive emotions, such as joy.

use our reasoning ability to drive away "all that excites or affrights us.

The Stoics, as we have seen, thought tranquility was worth pursuing, and the tranquility they sought, it will be remembered, is a psychological state in which we experience few negative emotions, such as anxiety, grief, and fear, but an abundance of positive emotions, especially joy.

They warn us to be careful in choosing our associates; other people, after all, have the power to shatter our tranquility—if we let them.

you will be willing to think about the past and present in order to learn things that can help you better deal with the obstacles to tranquility thrown your way in the future, you will refuse to spend time engaging in "if only" thoughts about the past and present.

OTHER PEOPLE, as we have seen, are the enemy in our battle for tranquility. It was for this reason that the Stoics spent time developing strategies for dealing with this enemy

Thus, tell someone that you possess and are willing to share with him an ancient strategy for attaining virtue, and you will likely be met with a yawn. Tell him that you possess and are willing to share an ancient strategy for attaining tranquility, though, and his ears are likely to perk up; in most cases, people don't need to be convinced of the value of tranquility.

My progress was rendered delightful by the sylvan elegance of the groves, chearful meadows, and high distant forests, which in grand order presented themselves to view.

A green world, a scene of green, deep / with light blues, the greens made deep / by those blues. One thinks how / in certain pictures, envied landscapes are seen / (through a window, maybe) far behind the serene / sitter's face, the serene pose, as though/in some impossible mirror, face to back, / human serenity gazed at a green world / which gazed at this face.

Upon the brimming water among the stonesAre nine-and-fifty swans.

We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.

When one gets quiet, then something wakes up inside one, something happy and quiet like the stars.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping...I hear it in the deep heart's core.

If aught of oaten stop or pastoral songMay hope, O pensive Eve, to soothe thine ear.

Oh for a lodge in some vast wilderness, Some boundless contiguity of shade, Where rumour of oppression and deceit, Of unsuccessful or successful war, Might never reach me more.

O Solitude! where are the charmsThat sages have seen in thy face?

Oh for a lodge in some vast wilderness,Some boundless contiguity of shade,Where rumor of oppression and deceit,Of unsuccessful or successful war,Might never reach me more.

...So let us welcome peaceful evening in.