Veum Insights...

“If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you’re needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person.”

“Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We've been using them not because we needed them but because we had them.”

“If you live in harmony with nature you will never be poor; if you live according what others think, you will never be rich.”

“Enjoy present pleasures in such a way as not to injure future ones.”

“It is not the man who has too little that is poor, but the one who hankers after more.”

“Withdraw into yourself, as far as you can. Associate with those who will make a better man of you. Welcome those whom you yourself can improve. The process is mutual; for men learn while they teach.”

“Regard [a friend] as loyal, and you will make him loyal.”

“To be everywhere is to be nowhere.”

“Limiting one’s desires actually helps to cure one of fear. ‘Cease to hope … and you will cease to fear.’ … Widely different [as fear and hope] are, the two of them march in unison like a prisoner and the escort he is handcuffed to. Fear keeps pace with hope … both belong to a mind in suspense, to a mind in a state of anxiety through looking into the future. Both are mainly due to projecting our thoughts far ahead of us instead of adapting ourselves to the present.”

“What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.”

“You should … live in such a way that there is nothing which you could not as easily tell your enemy as keep to yourself.”

“Nothing is burdensome if taken lightly, and nothing need arouse one's irritation so long as one doesn't make it bigger than it is by getting irritated.”

“Of this one thing make sure against your dying day - that your faults die before you do.”

“To win true freeedom you must be a slave to philosophy.”

“What man

can you show me who places any value on his time, who reckons the worth of each day, who understands that he is

dying daily? For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed,

Whatever years be behind us are in death's hands.”

“There is no enjoying the possession of anything valuable unless one has someone to share it with”

“But when you are looking on anyone as a friend when you do not trust him as you trust yourself, you are making a grave mistake, and have failed to grasp sufficiently the full force of true friendship.”

“The difficulty comes from our lack of confidence.”

“For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them”

“There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”

“What really ruins our character is the fact that none of us looks back over his life.”

“Wild animals run from the dangers they actually see, and once they have escaped them worry no more. We however are tormented alike by what is past and what is to come. A number of our blessings do us harm, for memory brings back the agony of fear while foresight brings it on prematurely. No one confines his unhappiness to the present.”

“What fortune has made yours is not your own.”

“A woman is not beautiful when her ankle or arm wins compliments, but when her total appearance diverts admiration from the individual parts of her body.”

“Philosophy calls for simple living, not for doing penance, and the simple way of life need not be a crude one.”

“I have learned to be a friend to myself Great improvement this indeed Such a one can never be said to be alone for know that he who is a friend to himself is a friend to all mankind”

“Let us say what we feel, and feel what we say; let speech harmonize with life.”

“Each day acquire something that will fortify you against poverty, against death, indeed against other misfortunes as well; and after you have run over many thoughts, select one to be thoroughly digested that day.”

“Hold fast, then, to this sound and wholesome rule of life - that you indulge the body only so far as is needful for good health. The body should be treated more rigorously, that it may not be disobedient to the mind.”

“For the only safe harbour in this life's tossing, troubled sea is to refuse to be bothered about what the future will bring and to stand ready and confident, squaring the breast to take without skulking or flinching whatever fortune hurls at us.”

“People who know no self-restraint lead stormy and disordered lives, passing their time in a state of fear commensurate with the injuries they do to others, never able to relax.”

“All this hurrying from place to place won’t bring you any relief, for you’re traveling in the company of your own emotions, followed by your troubles all the way.”

“My advice is really this: what we hear the philosophers saying and what we find in their writings should be applied in our pursuit of the happy life. We should hunt out the helpful pieces of teaching, and the spirited and noble-minded sayings which are capable of immediate practical application—not far-fetched or archaic expressions or extravagant metaphors and figures of speech—and learn them so well that words become works. No one to my mind lets humanity down quite so much as those who study philosophy as if it were a sort of commercial skill and then proceed to live in a quite different manner from the way they tell other people to live.”

“As it is with a play, so it is with life - what matters is not how long the acting lasts, but how good it is.”

“Everywhere means nowhere. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends. And the same thing must hold true of men who seek intimate acquaintance with no single author, but visit them all in a hasty and hurried manner. 3. Food does no good and is not assimilated into the body if it leaves the stomach as soon as it is eaten; nothing hinders a cure so much as frequent change of medicine; no wound will heal when one salve is tried after another; a plant which is often moved can never grow strong. There is nothing so efficacious that it can be helpful while it is being shifted about. And in reading of many books is distraction.”

“The fool, with all his other faults, has this also, he is always getting ready to live.”

“Because thou writest me often, I thank thee ... Never do I receive a letter from thee, but immediately we are together.”

“Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man's power to live long.”

“the more a mind takes in the more it expands.”

“When a mind is impressionable and has none too firm a hold on what is right, it must be rescued from the crowd: it is so easy for it to go over to the majority.”

“Here is your great soul—the man who has given himself over to Fate; on the other hand, that man is a weakling and a degenerate who struggles and maligns the order of the universe and would rather reform the gods than reform himself.”

“No man’s good by accident. Virtue has to be learnt.”

“Reason shows us there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

“It is in no man's power to have whatever he wants, but he has it in his power not to wish for what he hasn't got, and cheerfully make the most of the things that do come his way.”

“Words need to be sown like seeds. No matter how tiny a seed may be, when in lands in the right sort of ground it unfolds its strength and from being minute expands and grows to a massive size.”

“Life is slavery if the courage to die is absent.”

“Most men ebb and flow in wretchedness between the fear of death and the hardships of life; they are unwilling to live, and yet they do not know how to die. ”

“To expect punishment is to suffer it; and to earn it is to expect it.”

“Count your years and you'll be ashamed to be wanting and working for exactly the same things as you wanted when you were a boy. Of this one thing make sure against your dying day - that your faults die before you do. Have done with those unsettled pleasures, which cost one dear - they do one harm after they're past and gone, not merely when they're in prospect. Even when they're over, pleasures of a depraved nature are apt to carry feelings of dissatisfaction, in the same way as a criminal's anxiety doesn't end with the commission of the crime, even if it's undetected at the time. Such pleasures are insubstantial and unreliable; even if they don't do one any harm, they're fleeting in character. Look around for some enduring good instead. And nothing answers this description except what the spirit discovers for itself within itself. A good character is the only guarantee of everlasting, carefree happiness. Even if some obstacle to this comes on the scene, its appearance is only to be compared to that of clouds which drift in front of the sun without ever defeating its light.”

“A guilty person sometimes has the luck to escape detection, but never to feel sure of it.”

“Nothing, Lucilius, is ours, except time. We were entrusted by nature with the ownership of this single thing, so fleeting and slippery that anyone who will can oust us from possession.”

“Preserve a sense of proportion in your attitude to everything that pleases you, and make the most of them while they are at their best.”

“No man is good by chance. Virtue is something which must be learned.”

“A man is as unhappy as he has convinced himself he is.”

“How can you wonder your travels do you no good, when you carry yourself around with you? You are saddled with the very thing that drove you away.”

“For Fate/ The willing leads, the unwilling drags along.”

“Every day as it comes should be welcomed and reduced forthwith into our own possession as if it were the finest day imaginable. What flies past has to be seized at.”

“It is a great man that can treat his earthenware as if it was silver, and a man who treats his silver as if it was earthenware is no less great.”

“that you would not anticipate misery since the evils you dread as coming upon you may perhaps never reach you at least they are not yet come Thus some things torture us more than they ought, some before they ought and some which ought never to torture us at all. We heighten our pain either by presupposing a cause or anticipation”

“Happy is the man who can make others better, not merely when he is in their company, but even when he is in their thoughts!”