collected wisdoms

He does only what is his to do, and considers constantly what the universe has in store for him - doing his best, and trusting that all is for the best. For we carry our fate with us, and it carries us.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

You have to assemble your life yourself, action by action, and be satisfied if each one achieves as much as it can…. if you accept the obstacle and work with what you’re given, an alternative will present itself from another piece of what you’re trying to assemble. Action by action.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Search others for their virtues, thyself for thy vices.

Benjamin Franklin

We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies—all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes.

Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception