Quotes

“He alone knew something that even initiates didn’t know how easy it was to fast.” 

“For he alone, and no other initiate, knew how easy it was to starve. It was the easiest thing in the world. He did not keep this fact a secret, but no one believed him.” 

“Experience had proven that for about forty days, through gradually intensified publicity, you could go on stimulating a city’s interest, but beyond that time there was no audience.” 

“Because I couldn’t find a food which I enjoyed. If had found that, believe me, I would not have made a spectacle of myself and would have eaten to my heart’s content, like you and everyone else.” Those were his last words, but in his failing eyes there was the firm, if no longer proud, conviction that he was continuing to fast.” 

“Back then the hunger artist captured the attention of the entire city.”

If you appear to be somebody important to others, distrust yourself.

Remember that you ought to behave in life as you would at a banquet. As something is being passed around it comes to you; stretch out your hand, take a portion of it politely. It passes on; do not detain it. Or it has not come to you yet; do not project your desire to meet it, but wait until it comes in front of you. So act toward children, so toward a wife, so toward office, so toward wealth.

It is the act of an ill-instructed man to blame others for his own bad condition; it is the act of one who has begun to be instructed, to lay the blame on himself; and of one whose instruction is completed, neither to blame another, nor himself.

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

Stop the excuses and the procrastination. This is your life! You aren't a child anymore.... The longer you wait, the more you'll be vulnerable to mediocrity and feel filled with shame and regret, because you know you are capable of better. From this instant on, vow to stop disappointing yourself. Separate yourself from the mob. Decide to be extraordinary and do what you need to do -- now.

Books are the training weights of the mind.

If you think that you have free rein over things that are naturally beyond your control, or if you attempt to adopt the affairs of others as your own, your pursuits will be thwarted and you will become a frustrated, anxious, and fault-finding person.

Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not. It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what you can and can't control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible.

The vine bears three bunches of grapes: the first is that of pleasure, the second of drunkenness, the third of violence.

Give of what you have to strangers and to those who have need: for he who gives not to him who wants, will not receive himself when he wants.

As a wolf resembles a dog, so both a flatterer and an adulterer and a parasite resemble a friend. Take care then that instead of watch dogs you do not without knowing it let in mischievous wolves.

What we ought not to do, we should not even think of doing.

Law intends indeed to do service to human life, but it is not able when men do not choose to accept her services; for it is only in those who are obedient to her that she displays her special virtue.

Those who are well constituted in the body endure both heat and cold: and so those who are well constituted in the soul endure both anger and grief and excessive joy and the other effects.

The reproach of a father is agreeable medicine, for it contains more that is useful than it contains of that which gives pain.