REMEMBER that you must behave in life as at an entertainment. Is anything brought round to you? Put out your hand and take your share with moderation. Doth it pass by you? Do not stop it. Is it not yet come? Do not stretch forth your desire towards it, but wait till it reaches you.
EPICTETUS. MANUAL. 15.
LET death and exile, and all other things which appear terrible, be daily before your eyes, but chiefly death, and you will never entertain any abject thought, nor too eagerly covet anything.
E. M. 21.
AT a feast, to choose the largest share is very suitable to the bodily appetite, but utterly inconsistent with the social spirit of an entertainment. When you eat with another, then, remember not only the value of those things which are set before you to the body, but the value of that behaviour which ought to be observed towards the person who gives the entertainment.
E. M. 36.
We must savour life but not covet anything. Appreciate the gifts and not strive to hold them but have them in an open palm. This will allow us to treat them gently and also to pass them on to others as blessings for their lives also.
ReplyDeleteLife is a gift and each day must have all of the juice wrung out of it. :)
"LET death and exile, and all other things which appear terrible, be daily before your eyes, but chiefly death, and you will never entertain any abject thought, nor too eagerly covet anything."
ReplyDeleteIf we keep reminding ourselves, everyday, that we are only here for a moment and then no more. As Marcus reminds us again and again: "All of us are creatures of a day." And, even Heracletius: "Nothing endures but change." If we keep these thoughts firmly in our minds, how incredibly privileged, we then begin to see, is our own lives. How nobly we aspire to think and act. How selflessly we can give...
"Live each day as thought it were your last."
One day soon it will be.