Vanity of Glory

~ themista

From The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress (1905-06), by George Santayana.

The highest form of vanity is love of fame. It is a passion easy to deride but hard to understand, and in men who live at all by imagination almost impossible to eradicate. The good opinion of posterity can have no possible effect on our fortunes, and the practical value which reputation may temporarily have is quite absent in posthumous fame. The direct object of this passion–that a name should survive in men’s mouths to which no adequate idea of its original can be attached–seems a thin and fantastic satisfaction, especially when we consider how little we should probably sympathise with the creatures that are to remember us. What comfort would it be to Virgil that boys still read him at school, or to Pindar that he is sometimes mentioned in a world from which everything he loved has departed?

Two Elizabethans on Wisdom vs. Riches

~ themista

From The Sixth Booke of the Faerie Qveene, Canto IX, Stanza XXX (1590), by Edmund Spenser.

It is the mynd, that maketh good or ill,
That maketh wretch or happie, rich or poore:
For some, that hath abundance at his will,
Hath not enough, but wants in greatest store;
And other, that hath litle, askes no more,
But in that litle is both rich and wise.
For wisedome is most riches; fooles therefore
They are, which fortunes doe by vowes deuize,
Sith each vnto himselfe his life may fortunize.

And from Pericles, Prince of Tyre (1607), by William Shakespeare.

CERIMON
I hold it ever,
Virtue and cunning were endowments greater
Than nobleness and riches: careless heirs
May the two latter darken and expend;
But immortality attends the former,
Making a man a god. ‘Tis known, I ever
Have studied physic, through which secret art,
By turning o’er authorities, I have,
Together with my practise, made familiar
To me and to my aid the blest infusions
That dwell in vegetives, in metals, stones;
And I can speak of the disturbances
That nature works, and of her cures; which doth give me
A more content in course of true delight
Than to be thirsty after tottering honour,
Or tie my treasure up in silken bags,
To please the fool and death.

(The word cunning is used here with its older meaning of dexterity or knowing.)

Garden of Serenity

~ themista

From A Chinese Garden of Serenity (1959), by Hung Tzu-cheng, translated by Chao Tze-chiang:

Since the Void is not void, a fond illusion of life is not true, and a bitter disillusionment of life is also not true. Let us ask Shakyamuni what to do. Since to live in the world is to retreat from the world, an indulgence in desires is a suffering, and a suppression of desires is also a suffering. So we must in good faith hold to our integrity.

How to Resemble God in Everything

~ themista

From The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647), by Baltasar Gracian, translated in 1892 by Joseph Jacobs.

CXXXVII. The Sage should be Self-sufficing.

He that was all in all to himself carried all with him when he carried himself. If a universal friend can represent to us Rome and the rest of the world, let a man be his own universal friend, and then he is in a position to live alone. Whom could such a man want if there is no clearer intellect or finer taste than his own? He would then depend on himself alone, which is the highest happiness and like the Supreme Being. He that can live alone resembles the brute beast in nothing, the sage in much and God in everything.

How to Enrich the World

~ themista

From The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (1970), by Henry Miller.

To live beyond the pale, to work for the pleasure of working, to grow old gracefully while retaining one’s faculties, one’s enthusiasm, one’s self-respect, one has to establish other values than those endorsed by the mob. It asks an artist to make this breach in the wall. An artist is primarily one who has faith in himself. He does not respond to the normal stimuli; he is neither a drudge nor a parasite. He lives to express himself and in so doing enriches the world.

Seeing Eternity

~ themista

From Poems: Chiefly from Manuscript (1920), by John Clare.

Autumn

The thistle-down’s flying, though the winds are all still,
On the green grass now lying, now mounting the hill,
The spring from the fountain now boils like a pot;
Through stones past the counting it bubbles red hot.

The ground parched and cracked is like overbaked bread,
The greensward all wracked is, bents dried up and dead.
The fallow fields glitter like water indeed,
And gossamers twitter, flung from weed unto weed.

Hill tops like hot iron glitter bright in the sun,
And the rivers we’re eying burn to gold as they run;
Burning hot is the ground, liquid gold is the air;
Whoever looks round sees Eternity there.

Garden of Serenity

~ themista

From A Chinese Garden of Serenity (1959), by Hung Tzu-ch’eng, translated by Chao Tze-chiang:

Since mountains, rivers, and the whole earth are but dust, what do you expect from the tiniest dust within dust? Since the flesh, the blood, and the entire human body are but a shadow, what do you look for in a shadow cast by another shadow? Thus, without wisdom one cannot have an enlightened mind.

Stoicism and the Simple Life

~ themista

From From the Greeks to the Greens: Images of the Simple Life (1989), edited by Reinhold Grimm and Jost Hermand.

The Stoic concept of the “simple life” can be briefly summarized. The aim of the philosopher is to live in harmony with nature whose guiding principle is the logos or reason, also identified with God. Those who do live in harmony with reason are virtuous, which is the only good. To enable the human being to turn to and embrace the logos, moderation must be exercised in all areas of natural existence. The individual must become free of desires for externals and live simply. Wine does not slake thirst better than water, nor does a luxurious house keep one more sheltered than a simple one. The one who lives in harmony with the logos is truly free and happy, and since this state is the only real good, the presence of such things as health, pain, and death are of no importance. The Stoic “simple life” does not find its sense in itself; rather, it serves the freedom of the individual and, thus, allows one to pursue the goal of attaining the true good.

Kindling the Flame

~ themista

From The Vision of Asia: An Interpretation of Chinese Art and Culture (1933), by L. Cranmer-Byng.

The artist allows the life without him to penetrate within, and from the mingling of two vital flames new life is engendered and produced in new form. Since the Universal Spirit pervades all things, there is nothing that is incapable of co-operating in the purpose of Creation. And the final test of every work of art lies in the appeal of its vitality to ours; not in the flower but in the flame that kindles it into beauty and ourselves into recognition and response. Thus the art of life consists not merely in the ability to see the flame but to bear the flame, to liberate and let it pass from us into a future beyond our day.

Escaping from a Painful State of Mind

~ themista

From Campaign in France in the Year 1792 (1849), by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

I spoke of, and have heard it maintained, that a person can escape and save himself from a painful, self-torturing, gloomy state of mind, only by the contemplation of nature, and hearty sympathy with the outward world. Even the most general acquaintance with nature, it does not signify in what way, any active communication with it, either in gardening or farming, hunting or mining, draws us out of ourselves; the employment of mental energies upon real, actual appearances, gives us, by degrees, the greatest satisfaction, clearness, and instruction; just as the artist who keeps true to nature, and, at the same time, goes on cultivating his mind, is certain to succeed the best.