Quotes About Reflection

If you act rashly, without regard to consequences, you may defeat your purposes.

only judge your own thoughts, desires, and actions as good or evil.

What's odd in asserting that what's bad for anything is what runs contrary to its nature? You say it for everything else, why make humanity the sole exception?

When you are feeling upset, angry, or sad, don't blame another for your state of mind. Your condition is the result of your own opinions and interpretations.

If you do not wish to be prone to anger, do not feed the habit; give it nothing which may tend its increase.

Pidä silmiesi edessä joka päivä kuolema ja maanpako ja kaikki kauheana näyttäytyvä, ennen kaikkea kuolema. Silloin et koskaan ajattele mitään matalamielistä etkä himoitse mitään likaa.

that rational animals can hold off acting on impressions until they are scrutinized and assessed; and (2) if they are judged unreasonable – i.e. irrational or merely impractical – we can and should withhold our assent from them.

In every situation, consider what precedes it and what may follow—then act. If you act rashly, without regard to consequences, you may defeat your purposes.

ask yourself how Socrates or Zeno

the ability to make good use of impressions

If what charms you is nothing but abstract principles, sit down and turn them over quietly in your mind: but never dub yourself a Philosopher, nor suffer others to call you so. Say rather: He is in error; for my desires, my impulses are unaltered. I give in my adhesion to what I did before; nor has my mode of dealing with the things of sense undergone any change.

At first, keep quiet and count the days when you were not angry: I used to be angry every day, then every other day: next every two, next every three days! and if you succeed in passing thirty days, sacrifice to the Gods in thanksgiving.

What did I lack then, anyway?

If you do not wish to be prone to anger, do not feed the habit; give it nothin which may tend to its increase. At first, keep quiet and count the days when you were not angry: I used to be angry every day, then every other day: next, every two, then every three days! and if you succeed in passing thirty days, sacrifice to the gods in thanksgiving.

We are disturbed not by what happens to us, but by our thoughts about what happens.

Fools follow after vanity. The wise man keeps earnestness as his best jewel.

Follow not after vanity, nor after the enjoyment of love and lust! He who is earnest and meditative, obtains ample joy.

Every choice moves us closer to or farther away from something. Where are your choices taking your life? What do your behaviors demonstrate that you are saying yes or no to in life?

Our lives are not good—it is not the Afghanistan we remember—but it is still life.

I find that in contemplating the natural world my pleasure is greater if there are not too many others contemplating it with me, at the same time. —Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

Back in civilization I begin the questioning," wrote Randy. "What to do with life? What kind of life? In wilderness this ceases; the questions aren't answered, they dissolve."   BEFORE

Jeff: I don't need a limousine to know who I am. At least I know I don't know.

Buff: What are you doing now? Bee-Bee: I don't know. You mean like now? Like right now? Waiting.

In being slower, time is more capacious. The event is only in the moment. By speeding through life with technology, you reduce what any given moment can hold. By slowing down, you expand it.