A Quote by Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sevigne
Were it not for the amusement of our books, we should be moped to death for want of occupation. It rains incessantly. ... we tickle ourselves in order to laugh; to so low an ebb are we reduced.
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Happiness does not consist in amusement. In fact, it would be strange if our end were amusement, and if we were to labor and suffer hardships all our life long merely to amuse ourselves.... The happy life is regarded as a life in conformity with virtue. It is a life which involves effort and is not spent in amusement.
As historians, we refuse to allow ourselves these vain speculations which turn on possibilities that, in order to be reduced to actuality, suppose an overturning of the Universe, in which our globe, like a speck of abandoned matter, escapes our vision and is no longer an object worthy of our regard. In order to fix our vision, it is necessary to take it such as it is, to observe well all parts of it, and by indications infer from the present to the past.
Fame is a revenue payable only to our ghosts; and to deny ourselves all present satisfaction, or to expose ourselves to so much hazard for this, were as great madness as to starve ourselves, or fight desperately for food, to be laid on our tombs after our death.
In our production-oriented society, being busy, having an occupation, has become one of the main ways, if not the main way, of identifying ourselves. Without an occupation, not just our economic security but our very identity is endangered.
One day guns were pulled on us by older guys. My friend had gone to sell his moped and they took the moped, my friend's phone and some money. But all he got from my pocket was a tub of Vaseline. I remember him saying, 'Oh, he's a sweet boy' and throwing my Vaseline on the floor.
We talk to ourselves incessantly about our world. In fact we maintain our world with our internal talk. And whenever we finish talking to ourselves about ourselves and our world, the world is always as it should be. We renew it, we rekindle it with life, we uphold it with our internal talk. Not only that, but we also choose our paths as we talk to ourselves. Thus we repeat the same choices over and over until the day we die, because we keep on repeating the same internal talk over and over until the day we die. A warrior is aware of this and strives to stop his internal talk.
We cannot and should not be reduced to just one sliver of ourselves, as it skews the truth of our lived experiences.
If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read? So that it shall make us happy? Good God, we should also be happy if we had no books, and such books as make us happy we could, if need be, write ourselves. But what we must have are those books which come upon us like ill fortune, and distress us deeply, like the death of one we love better than ourselves; like suicide. A book must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.
My wish simply is to live my life as fully as I can. In both our work and our leisure, I think, we should be so employed. And in our time this means that we must save ourselves from the products that we are asked to buy in order, ultimately, to replace ourselves.
Paris is a hard place to leave, even when it rains incessantly and one coughs continually from the dampness.
Even today we raise our hand against our brother... We have perfected our weapons, our conscience has fallen asleep, and we have sharpened our ideas to justify ourselves as if it were normal we continue to sow destruction, pain, death. Violence and war lead only to death.
So I think if we want to turn the table around, more than thinking about how can we starve the Islamic State in terms of money, we should think about how can we maximise the amount of resources that we have in order to secure ourselves. For us, instead of bombing so much, which is extremely expensive, perhaps, you know, we should use some of that money in order to protect ourselves.
Why does death engender fear? Because death meant change, a change greater then we have ever known, and because death was indeed a mirror that made us see ourselves as never before. A mirror that we should cover, as people in olden days covered mirrors when someone died, for fear of an evil. For with all our care and pain for those who had gone, it was ourselves too we felt the agony for. Perhaps ourselves above all.
When we believe that we ought to be satisfied, rather than God glorified, we set God below ourselves, imagine that He should submit His own honor to our advantage; we make ourselves more glorious than God, as though we were not made for Him, but He made for us; this is to have a very low esteem of the majesty of God.
It should surprise no one that I'm out arguing for small government, reduced spending and getting our financial house in order, along with reasonable regulations and no more.
Our bodies, speeches and minds need to be trained so that they will do anything we want. We can cry or laugh at once when we want to. Then it will be a natural response; we will cry when it is time to cry, and laugh when we should laugh. Do you understand? We can get angry when necessary; we can be gentle if we have to. We will completely become our own master. Then, no matter what we want to do, it will benefit the world. It is not difficult to attain this stage; all we need to do is to mediate.
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