Timeless advice & practical wisdom

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
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Simple Minded

Timeless advice & practical wisdom

Post by Simple Minded »

In the interests of using OTNOT to further humanity's continual evolution towards enlightenment, share what you have learned.

Make the world a better place thru being an example of a better person.

Memorable quotes, advice from elders, benefits of personal mistakes, good books, great teachers, etc.

This be the place......

Advice from a good friend to another after watching them do something stupid and suffer the consequences: "That's why stupid is supposed to hurt!"

Fatherly compassion after you hurt yourself doing something you were told not to do, and delivered prior to getting any medical attention or sympathy: "Well..... did you learn anything?" or "Wow! I bet that hurt. Guess you won't be doing that again anytime soon... huh?"
Simple Minded

Re: Timeless advice & practical wisdom

Post by Simple Minded »

"Don't be an idiiott!" Everyone knows the theory, not as many follow the practice.
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Typhoon
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Re: Timeless advice & practical wisdom

Post by Typhoon »

Open any page of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.
You have power over your mind - not outside events.
Realize this, and you will find strength.

Marcus Aurelius
May the gods preserve and defend me from self-righteous altruists; I can defend myself from my enemies and my friends.
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Typhoon
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Re: Timeless advice & practical wisdom

Post by Typhoon »

Or On the Nature of Thingsby Lucretius
And life is given to none freehold, but it is leasehold for all.

Lucretius
The two canons of early Western thought, Stoicism and Epicureanism.
May the gods preserve and defend me from self-righteous altruists; I can defend myself from my enemies and my friends.
Simple Minded

Re: Timeless advice & practical wisdom

Post by Simple Minded »

Typhoon wrote:Open any page of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.
You have power over your mind - not outside events.
Realize this, and you will find strength.

Marcus Aurelius
One of the greatest books ever written, IMSMO. My favorite translation is the one done by Maxwell Staniforth.
Simple Minded

Re: Timeless advice & practical wisdom

Post by Simple Minded »

In the same vein as Marcus Aurelius:

"We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves and in our own being; we desire to live an imaginary life in the mind of others, and for this purpose we endeavor to shine. We labor unceasingly to adorn and preserve this imaginary existence and neglect the real. A great proof of the nothingness of our being, not to be satisfied with the one without the other, and to renounce so often the one for the other!"
Blaise Pascal

"Character isn’t inherited. One builds it daily by the way one thinks and acts, thought by thought, action by action. If one lets fear or hate or anger take possession of the mind, they become self-forged chains."
Helen Gahagan Douglas

"I am quite my own master, agreeably lodged, and perfectly at ease in my circumstances. I am contented with my situation, and happy because I think myself so."
Alain Rene’ Le Sage

"The fountain of content must spring up in the mind, and he who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts, and multiply the grief he proposes to remove."
Dr. Samuel Johnson

"My third maxim was to endeavor always to conquer myself rather than fortune, and change my desires rather than the order of the world, and thus render myself contented."
Rene Descartes
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