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Daily Touch of Inspirations
May 17th: The Stoic is work in progress
Ryan Holiday, The 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living
Show me someone's sick and happy, in danger and happy, disgraced and happy. Show me! By God, how much I'd like to see a Stoic. But since you can't show me someone that perfectly formed, at least show me someone actively forming themselves so, inclined in this way... Show me! ~Epictetus, Discourses, 2.19.24-25a,28
[Javits Wild] When he was in the country, he always asked the people he chanced to meet what "normal life" was like, because he had forgotten. The answers varied, and he gradually came to realize that, even when he was surrounded by other people, he was absolutely alone in the world. He decided to draw up a list of what constituted normal attitudes and behavior, based on what people did rather than on what they said.
- Normal is anything that makes us forget who we are and what we want; that way we can work in order to produce, reproduce, and earn money.
- Setting out rules for waging war (the Geneva Convention).
- Spending years studying at university only to find at the end of it all that you're unemployable.
Daily Touch of Inspirations
August 14th: This isn't for fun. It's for life
Ryan Holiday, The 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living
Philosophy isn't a parlor trick or made for show. It's not concerned with words, but with facts. It's not employed for some pleasure before the day is spent, or to relieve the uneasiness of our leisure. It shapes and builds up the soul, it gives order to life, guides action, shows what and shouldn't be done — it sits at the rudder steering our course as we vacillate in uncertainties. Without it, no one can live without fear or free from care. Countless things happen every hour that require advice, and such advice is to be sought out in philosophy. — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 9.26
The Greatest Commandment
Mark 12:28-31 New International Version (NIV)
28 One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”
29 “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
www.myINSPIRATIONALquotes.net
Daily Touch of Inspirations
February 12th: Protect your peace of mind
Ryan Holiday, The 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living
Keep constant guard over your perceptions, for it is no small thing you are protecting, but your respect, trustworthiness and steadiness, peace of mind, freedom from pain and fear, in a word your freedom. For what would you sell these things? — Epictetus, Discourses, 4.3.6b-8
Daily Touch of Inspirations
June 19th: Stay focused on the present
Ryan Holiday, The 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living
Don't let your reflection on the whole sweep of life crush you. Don't fill your mind with all the bad things that might still happen. Stay focused on the present situation and ask yourself why it's so unbearable and can't be survived. —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 8.36