From A Dictionary of Thoughts (1908), by Tryon Edwards.
There is not in the world so toilsome a trade as the pursuit of fame; life concludes before you have so much as sketched your work.– Jean de La Bruyère.
Garden of Serenity
From A Chinese Garden of Serenity (1959), by Hung Tzu-ch’eng, translated by Chao Tze-chiang:
How can the spending of thousands of gold coins to form acquaintance with eminent or influential people, be as good as pouring half the rice out of a gourd to relieve the hunger of the poor? How can the building of a stately edifice to attract more guests, be as good as repairing a thatched hut to shelter the humble and the neglected?
Benefits of the Aesthetic Way of Life
From Proust and Santayana: The Aesthetic Way of Life (1937), by Van Meter Ames.
People like Proust and Santayana who have discovered contemplation do not envy those absorbed in position and possession, for the aesthetic way of life leads to deeper happiness than the acquisitive way. If men are to give up money-making and power-seeking as their aim they must be converted to the other outlook which involves a transvaluation of values; and if contemplation and aesthetic enjoyment could become popular the Gordian knot in which our social order is tied might be cut. If most people found their joy in goods which cost nothing but appreciation, physical wealth would not be coveted beyond necessity and its fair distribution might no longer be hampered by greed.
The Highest Happiness
From Solitude (1830), by Johann von Zimmermann.
The highest happiness which is capable of being enjoyed in this world, consists in peace of mind. The wise mortal who renounces the tumults of the world, restrains his desires and inclinations, resigns himself to the dispensations of his Creator, and looks with an eye of pity on the frailties of his fellow creatures; whose greatest pleasure is to listen among the rocks to the soft murmurs of a cascade; to inhale, as he walks along the plains, the refreshing breezes of the zephyrs; and to dwell in the surrounding woods, on the melodious accents of the aerial choristers; may, by the simple feelings of his heart, obtain this invaluable blessing.
The Vanity of Glory
Omnes Vanitas, by Ambrose Bierce (1903):
Alas for ambition’s possessor!
Alas for the famous and proud!
The Isle of Manhattan’s best dresser
Is wearing a hand-me-down shroud.The world has forgotten his glory;
The wagoner sings on his wain,
And Chauncey Depew tells a story,
And jackasses laugh in the lane.
The Interdependence of All Things
From Poems from the Divan of Hafiz (14th century), by Hafez, translated by Gertrude Bell in 1897.
The conception of the union and interdependence of all things divine and human is far older than Sufi thought. It goes back to the earliest Indian teaching, and Professor Deussen, in his book on Metaphysics, has pointed out the conclusion which is drawn from it in the Veda. “The gospels,” he says, “fix quite correctly as the highest law of morality, Love thy neighbour as thyself. But why should I do so, since by the order of nature I feel pain and pleasure only in myself, not in my neighbour? The answer is not in the Bible (this venerable book being not yet quite free from Semitic realism), but it is in the Veda: You shall love your neighbour as yourselves because you are your neighbour; a mere illusion makes you believe that your neighbour is something different from yourselves. Or in the words of the Bhagaradgitah: He who knows himself in everything and everything in himself, will not injure himself by himself. This is the sum and tenor of all morality, and this is the standpoint of a man knowing himself a Brahman.”
(Bhagaradgitah is an alternate spelling of Bhagavad Gita)
Also:
The Sufis were forced to pay an exaggerated deference to the Prophet and to Ali in order to keep on good terms with the orthodox, but since they believed God to be the source of all creeds they could not reasonably place one above another; nay more, since they taught that any man who practised a particular religion had failed to free himself from duality and to reach perfect union with God, they must have held Mahommadanism in like contempt with all other faiths. “When thou and I remain not (when man is completely united with God), what matters the Ka’ba and the Synagogue and the Monastery?” That is, what difference is there between the religion of Mahommadan, Jew, and Christian?
Garden of Serenity
From A Chinese Garden of Serenity (1959), by Hung Tzu-ch’eng, translated by Chao Tze-chiang:
Those who express loathing for pomp and vainglory might, on encountering them, revel in them. Those who profess rejoicing at contentment and simplicity might, in experiencing them, become bored with them. So one must sweep away enthusiasm and indifference, eliminate predilection and aversion, forget pomp and vainglory, and delight in contentment and simplicity.
Vanity of Glory
From Zen and Zen Classics, Volume 1 (1960), by R. H. Blyth.
A deep love of poetry, of nature, of music will make a man correspondingly indifferent to money, fame, power, and all the other things that Buddhists and Christians without this love inveigh against.
The Soothing Harmony of Marcus Aurelius
From The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (1912), by George Gissing.
Many a time, when life went hard with me, I have betaken myself to the Stoics, and not all in vain. Marcus Aurelius has often been one of my bedside books; I have read him in the night watches, when I could not sleep for misery, and when assuredly I could have read nothing else. He did not remove my burden; his proofs of the vanity of earthly troubles availed me nothing; but there was a soothing harmony in his thought which partly lulled my mind, and the mere wish that I could find strength to emulate that high example (though I knew that I never should) was in itself a safeguard against the baser impulses of wretchedness.
Hat tip: Graveyard Masonry.
If You’re Curious About What the Universe Actually Is . . .
From The Last Harvest (1922), by John Burroughs.
While I cannot believe that we live in a world of chance, any more than Darwin could, yet I feel that I am as free from any teleological taint as he was. The world-old notion of a creator and director, sitting apart from the universe and shaping and controlling all its affairs, a magnified king or emperor, finds no lodgment in my mind. Kings and despots have had their day, both in heaven and on earth. The universe is a democracy. The Whole directs the Whole. Every particle plays its own part, and yet the universe is a unit as much as is the human body, with all its myriad of individual cells, and all its many separate organs functioning in harmony. And the mind I see in nature is just as obvious as the mind I see in myself, and subject to the same imperfections and limitations.
The Value of Little Things
From The Inner Beauty (1910), by Maurice Maeterlinck.
If we could ask of an angel what it is that our souls do in the shadow, I believe the angel would answer, after having looked for many years perhaps, and seen far more than the things the soul seems to do in the eyes of men, “They transform into beauty all the little things that are given to them.”
Garden of Serenity
From A Chinese Garden of Serenity (1959), by Hung Tzu-ch’eng, translated by Chao Tze-chiang:
A pigeon, when annoyed by the bells on its neck, will fly higher and higher, but it does not know that to fold its wings will stop the tinkling of the bells. A man, when irked by his shadow, may run faster and faster, but he does not understand that to stay in a shady place will eliminate his shadow. So the foolish people who run fast and fly high find a smooth ground to be a sea of suffering, whereas people of insight who stay in the shade and fold their wings discover a craggy slope to be a level road.