Echoes

It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.

Nor less I deem that there are Powers / Which of themselves our minds impress; / That we can feed this mind of ours / In a wise passiveness.

Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things.

The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.

He who remembers the evils he has undergone, and those that have threatened him, and the slight causes that have changed him from one state to another, prepares himself in that way for future changes and for recognizing his condition. The life of Caesar has no more to show us than our own; an emperor's or an ordinary man's, it is still a life subject to all human accidents.

Cherish that which is within you, and shut off that which is without; for much knowledge is a curse.

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.

In every systematic inquiry where there are first principles, or causes, or elements, knowledge and science result from acquiring knowledge of these.

We do not belong to those who have ideas only among books, when stimulated by books. It is our habit to think outdoors — walking, leaping, climbing, dancing.

The way to find out about our place in the universe is by examining the universe and by examining ourselves—without preconceptions, with as unbiased a mind as we can muster. We cannot begin with an entirely clean slate, since we arrive at this problem with predispositions of hereditary and environmental origin; but, after understanding such built-in biases, is it not possible to pry insights from nature?

It is not things that disturb us, but our judgments about things. For example, death is nothing terrible, for if it were, it would have appeared so to Socrates; but the judgment that death is terrible — that is the terrible thing.

Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times. This arises from the fact that they are produced by men who ever have been, and ever shall be, animated by the same passions, and thus they necessarily have the same results.

Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.

To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. 'Tis much better to do a little with certainty, & leave the rest for others that come after you, than to explain all things by conjecture without making sure of any thing.

External things are not the problem. It's your assessment of them. Which you can erase right now.

The present of things past is memory; the present of things present is sight; and the present of things future is expectation.

Come forth into the light of things, let Nature be your teacher.

To study the phenomenon of disease without books is to sail an uncharted sea, while to study books without patients is not to go to sea at all.

Every faculty in one man is the measure by which he judges of the like faculty in another. I judge of your sight by my sight, of your ear by my ear, of your reason by my reason, of your resentment by my resentment, of your love by my love. I neither have, nor can have, any other way of judging about them.

There are two sentences inscribed upon the Delphic oracle, hugely accommodated to the usages of man's life: "Know thyself," and "Nothing too much;" and upon these all other precepts depend.

The present moment contains past and future. The secret of transformation, is in the way we handle this very moment.

Example is the best lesson there is.

You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.

I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics; that is my physics.