If you run through the streets, saying you imitate a lunatic, you are in fact a lunatic. If you kill a man, saying you imitate a criminal, you are a criminal yourself. A man who studies wisdom, even insincerely, should be called wise.
Yoshida Kenko
Updates from April, 2020 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Doug Belshaw
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Doug Belshaw
It is not in human nature to deceive others, for any long time, without, in a measure, deceiving ourselves.
J.H. Newman
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Doug Belshaw
During a carnival men put cardboard faces over their masks.
Xavier Forneret
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Doug Belshaw
Too much secrecy in our affairs and too little are equally indicative of a weak spirit.
Vauvenargues
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Doug Belshaw
A man’s most open actions have a secret side to them.
Joseph Conrad
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Doug Belshaw
Nothing diminishes anxiety faster than action.
Walter Anderson -
Doug Belshaw
The happy man, therefore, possesses sound judgement; the happy man is satisfied with his present situation, no matter what it is, and eyes his fortune with contentment, the happy man is the one who permits reason to evaluate every condition of his existence.
Seneca, ‘On the Happy Life’
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Doug Belshaw
We may also odd the following definition, that of calling that man happy who recognizes no good and evil apart from a good and an evil mind, who holds honour dear and is content with virtue, who is not the sort of person to let the workings of chance go to his head or crush his spirit, who does not recognize any good greater than the one he alone can confer upon himself, and who will find true pleasure in despising pleasures.
Seneca, ‘On the Happy Life’
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Doug Belshaw
Accordingly, the happy life is the one that is in harmony with its own nature, and the only way it can be achieved is if, first, the mind is sound and constantly in possession of its sanity, and secondly, if it is brave and vigorous, and, in addition, capable of the noblest endurance, adapting to every new situation, attentive to the body and to all that affects it, but not in an anxious way, and finally, if it concerns itself with all the things that enhance life, without showing indie respect for any one of them, taking advantage of Fortune’s gifts, but not becoming their slave.
Seneca, ‘On the Happy Life’
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Doug Belshaw
Human concerns are not so happily arranged that the majority favours the better things: evidence of the worst choice is the crowd. So let us enquire what is the best, not what is the most customary, thing to do, and what establishes our claim to unending happiness, not what the rabble, that worst of truth’s exponents, had set its stamp of approval on.
Seneca, ‘On the Happy Life’
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