For my part I attend to my own duty, and other things do not distract me; for they are either lifeless, or devoid of reason, or have gone astray and have no knowledge of their path. _Marcus Aurelius_ Take your delight and your rest in one thing alone; to pass from one action that serves the good of your fellows to the next, keeping God in your thoughts. _Marcus Aurelius_ So display the qualities that are wholly within your power, sincerity, dignity, endurance, disdain for sensual pleasure, satisfaction with your lot, contentment with little, kindness, freedom, frugality, avoidance of idle chatter, and elevation of mind. _Marcus Aurelius_ Many grains of incense cast on the same altar; one falls earlier, another later, it makes no difference at all. _Marcus Aurelius_ Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to live. The inescapable is hanging over your head; while you have life in you, while you still can, make yourself good. _Marcus Aurelius_ Do not wander astray in your mind, but with regard to every impulse deliver what is right, and with regard to every idea that presents itself preserve your power of judgment. _Marcus Aurelius_ Is the teaching of Christ less effective now than it was when his mouth was first opened? The emphasis of facts and persons in my thought has nothing to do with time. _Ralph Waldo Emerson_ The soul’s advances are not made by gradation, such as can be represented by motion in a straight line, but rather by ascension of state, such as can be represented by metamorphosis – from the egg to the worm, from the worm to the fly. _Ralph Waldo Emerson_ The characteristic of heroism is persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have chosen your part, abide by it, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic. _Ralph Waldo Emerson_ When the spirit is not the master of the world, then it is its dupe. _Ralph Waldo Emerson_ Self-trust is the essence of heroism. It is the state of the soul at war, and its ultimate objects are the last defiance of falsehood and wrong, and the power to bear all that can be inflicted by evil agents. _Ralph Waldo Emerson_ Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles. _Ralph Waldo Emerson_ Prayer that craves a particular commodity, anything less than all good, is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to effect a private end is meanness and theft. _Ralph Waldo Emerson_ If I quake, what matters what I quake at? Our proper vice takes form in one or another shape, according to the sex, age, or temperament of the person, and, if we are capable of fear, will readily find terrors. _Ralph Waldo Emerson_ To finish the moment, to find the journey’s end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom. _Ralph Waldo Emerson_ The world looks like a multiplication-table, or a mathematical equation, which, turn it how you will, balances itself. Take what figure you will, its exact value, nor more nor less, still returns to you. Every secret is told, every crime is punished, every virtue rewarded, every wrong redressed, in silence and certainty. _Ralph Waldo Emerson_ It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. _Ralph Waldo Emerson_ O while I live to be the ruler of life, not a slave, to meet life as a powerful conqueror, no fumes, no ennui, no more complaints or scornful criticisms, to these proud laws of the air, the water and the ground, proving my interior soul impregnable, and nothing exterior shall ever take command of me. _Walt Whitman_ O the joy of my spirit—it is uncaged—it darts like lightning! It is not enough to have this globe or a certain time, I will have thousands of globes and all time. _Walt Whitman_ Meaningless! Meaningless! Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless. _King Solomon_ NOT my enemies ever invade me—no harm to my pride from them I fear; but the lovers I recklessly love—lo! how they master me! Lo! me, ever open and helpless, bereft of my strength! Utterly abject, groveling on the ground before them. _Walt Whitman_ Quicksand years that whirl me I know not whither, your schemes, politics, fail—lines give way—substances mock and elude me; only the theme I sing, the great and strong-possessed soul, eludes not; one’s self, must never give way—that is the final substance—that out of all is sure; out of politics, triumphs, battles, death—what at last finally remains? When shows break up, what but One’s-Self is sure? _Walt Whitman_ This day, O soul, I give you a wondrous mirror; long in the dark, in tarnish and cloud it lay—But the cloud has passed, and the tarnish gone; behold, O soul! it is now a clean and bright mirror, faithfully showing you all the things of the world. _Walt Whitman_ The more the words, the less the meaning, and how does that profit anyone? _King Solomon_ Do not wear yourself out to get rich; have the wisdom to show restraint. _Proverbs_ When you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to men that you are fasting, but only to your Father. _Jesus_ What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? _Jesus_ Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn. _Henry David Thoreau_ I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. _Henry David Thoreau_ It matters not how straight the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul. _Invictus (final verse), William Ernest Henley_ Nothing means nothing. _Macho Man Randy Savage_ Be where your feet are. _Dwayne Osgood_ Watch what you say instead of saying what you watch. _Charles Stewart (Chali 2na)_ The main attraction: distraction. _Zacharias Manuel de la Rocha (Zack de la Rocha)_ We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning. _Jean Baudrillard_ I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! _Friedrich Nietzsche_ Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence. _Erich Fromm_ Eternity isn’t some later time. Eternity isn’t a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time! Eternity is that dimension of here and now which thinking and time cuts out. This is it. If you don’t get it here, you won’t get it anywhere. And the experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life. _Joseph Campbell_ I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all. _King Solomon_