Quotes About Mindfulness

Be like a rocky promontory against which the restless surf continually pounds; it stands fast while the churning sea is lulled to sleep at its feet. I hear you say, How unlucky that this should happen to me! Not at all! Say instead, How lucky that I am not broken by what has happened and am not afraid of what is about to happen. The same blow might have struck anyone, but not many would have absorbed it without capitulation or complaint.

Not to waste time on nonsense. Not to be taken in by conjurors and hoodoo artists with their talk about incantations and exorcism and all the rest of it. Not to be obsessed with quail-fighting or other crazes like that.

That all is as thinking makes it so – and you control your thinking. So remove your judgements whenever you wish and then there is calm - as the sailor rounding the cape finds smooth water and the welcome of a waveless bay.

Do the things external which fall upon thee distract thee? Give thyself time to learn something new and good, and cease to be whirled around.

Retire into thyself. The rational principle which rules has this nature, that it is content with itself when it does what is just, and so secures tranquility.

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.

8. It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character. Otherwise it cannot harm you—inside or out.

Whether you are shivering with cold or too hot, sleepy or wide awake, spoken well of or badly, dying, or doing anything else, do not let it interfere with doing what is right. For whatever causes us to die is also one of life's processes. Even for this, nothing is required of us than to accomplish well the task at hand.

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.

Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see.

Death hangs over thee. While thou livest, while it is in thy power, be good.

Do not let the future disturb you, for you will arrive there, if you arrive, with the same reason you now apply to the present.

Anger and the sorrow it produces are far more harmful than the things which make us angry.

How good it is, when you have roast meat or suchlike foods before you, to impress on your mind that this is the dead body of a fish, this the dead body of a bird or pig.

All is ephemeral, both what remembers and what is remembered.

Almost nothing material is needed for a happy life, for he who has understood existence.

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.

In everything that you do, pause and ask yourself if death is a dreadful thing because it deprives you of this.

The soul of a man harms itself, first and foremost, when it becomes (as far as it can) a separate growth, a sort of tumour on the universe; because to resent anything that happens is to separate oneself in revolt from Nature, which holds in collective embrace the particular natures of all other things.

Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what's left and live it properly.

In this flowing stream, then, on which there is no abiding, what is there of the things which hurry by on which a man would set a high price? It would be just as if a man should fall in love with one of the sparrows which fly by, but it has already passed out of sight.

Though thou shouldst be going to live three thousand years, and as many times ten thousand years, still remember that no man loses any other life than this which he now lives, nor lives any other than this which he now loses. The longest and shortest are thus brought to the same. For the present is the same to all, though that which perishes is not the same; and so that which is lost appears to be a mere moment.

Disgraceful: for the soul to give up when the body is still going strong.

To stand up straight — not straightened