Echoes

We always strive for what is forbidden, and desire what is denied.

There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.

By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try, the world is beyond the winning.

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; but remember that what you now have was once among the things only hoped for.

When you do something, you should burn yourself completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

There are some men who expose themselves to damnation so foolishly by avarice, by brutality, by debauches, by violence, by excesses, by blasphemies! ...it is always a great folly for a man to expose himself to damnation... He must despise desire and its kingdom, and aspire to that kingdom of love in which all the subjects breathe nothing but love, and desire nothing but the benefits of love.

Be detached from desire your whole life long.

You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have both.

Think what you do when you run in debt; you give to another power over your liberty. If you cannot pay at the time, you will be ashamed to see your creditor; you will make poor pitiful sneaking excuses, and by degrees come to lose your veracity, and sink into base downright lying.

He who is not satisfied with a little, is satisfied with nothing.

Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water.

Those who are slaves to their appetites cannot preserve their reason, their memory, or their senses in their full vigour; for a full belly does not produce a fine mind.

Do not impose on others what you yourself do not want.

Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: "Is this the condition that I feared?"

An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit.

He who is not satisfied with a little is satisfied with nothing.

It is the preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.

Do this, my dear Lucilius: claim yourself for yourself; gather and save the time which until now was either being taken from you or stolen from you or simply slipping away.

One should not eat unless one is hungry, nor drink unless one is thirsty.

Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.

A person should not eat until his stomach is full. Rather, he should eat until he has consumed approximately three quarters of his fill.

This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig down into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple "I must," then build your life according to this necessity.

In pursuit of learning, every day something is acquired. In pursuit of Tao, every day something is dropped.

Never despair.