Carolyn Marie's Reviews > Meditations

“Love only what falls your way and is fated to you. What could suit you more than that?”

“Even if you were destined to live three thousand years, or ten times that long, nevertheless remember that no one loses any life other than the one he lives, or lives any life other than the one he loses…No one can lose either the past or the future – how could anyone be deprived of what he does not possess?…It is only the present moment of which either stands to be deprived: and if indeed this is all he has, he cannot lose what he does not have.”

“Men seek retreats for themselves – in the country, by the sea, in the hills – and you yourself are particularly prone to this yearning. But all this is quite unphilosophic, when it is open to you, at any time you want, to retreat into yourself. No retreat offers someone more quiet and relaxation then that into his own mind, especially if he can dip into thoughts there which put him at immediate and complete ease: and by ease I simply mean a well ordered life.”

“So discard all else and secure these few things only. Remind yourself too that each of us lives only in the present moment, a mere fragment of time: the rest is life past or uncertain future. Sure, life is a small thing, and small the cranny of the earth in which we live it: small too even the longest fame thereafter, which is itself subject to a succession of a little men who will quickly die, and have no knowledge even of themselves, let alone of those long dead.”

“What a tiny part of the boundless abyss of time has been allotted to each of us – and this is soon vanished in eternity; what a tiny part of the universal substance and the universal soul; how tiny in the whole earth the mere clod on which you creep. Reflecting on all this, think nothing important other than active pursuit where your own nature leads and passive acceptance of what universal nature brings.”