“For, to speak out once for all, man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays.”
— Friedrich Schiller, Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (1795)
“Reason also utters the decision that man shall only play with beauty, and he shall only play with beauty.”
— Friedrich Schiller, Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (1795)
“Remember that it is not he who reviles you or strikes you, who insults you, but it is your opinion about these things as being insulting. When then a man irritates you, you must know that it is your own opinion which has irritated you.”
— Epictetus, Enchiridion
“Remember that in life you ought to behave as at a banquet. Suppose that something is carried round and is opposite to you. Stretch out your hand and take a portion with decency. Suppose that it passes by you. Do not detain it.”
— Epictetus, Enchiridion
“The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways—I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.”
— Plato, Apology
“men should combine these tendencies, and he who reposes should act and he who acts should take repose. Discuss the problem with Nature; she will tell you that she has created both day and night.”
— Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius
“You must linger among a limited number of master-thinkers, and digest their works, if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind. Everywhere means nowhere.”
— Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius
“If thou workest at that which is before thee, following right reason seriously, vigorously, calmly, without allowing anything else to distract thee, but keeping thy divine part pure, as if thou shouldst be bound to give it back immediately; if thou holdest to this, expecting nothing, fearing nothing, but satisfied with thy present activity according to nature, and with heroic truth in every word and sound which thou utterest, thou wilt live happy. And there is no man who is able to prevent this.”
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“There are only a few who control themselves and their affairs by a guiding purpose; the rest do not proceed; they are merely swept along, like objects afloat in a river.”
— Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius
“Of things some are in our power, and others are not.”
— Epictetus, Enchiridion
“Hence, every day ought to be regulated as if it closed the series, as if it rounded out and completed our existence.”
— Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius
“If you would be loved, love.”
— Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius
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