Delphic Maxims 39

Χρόνου φείδου

Use time sparingly 

IMAGE: Gaspar Jacob van Opstal the Younger, An Allegory of Time, Work, and Idleness (c. 1700) 

Aesop's Fables 71

The Lion in Love 

A Lion once fell in love with a beautiful maiden and proposed marriage to her parents. 

The old people did not know what to say. They did not like to give their daughter to the Lion, yet they did not wish to enrage the King of Beasts. 

At last the father said: "We feel highly honored by your Majesty's proposal, but you see our daughter is a tender young thing, and we fear that in the vehemence of your affection you might possibly do her some injury. 

"Might I venture to suggest that your Majesty should have your claws removed, and your teeth extracted, then we would gladly consider your proposal again." 

The Lion was so much in love that he had his claws trimmed and his big teeth taken out. 

But when he came again to the parents of the young girl they simply laughed in his face, and bade him do his worst. 

Love can tame the wildest. 

Abandoned Places 50

Romain Veillon, L'Ultimo Terrestre (2018) 

Nature 52

Stockdale on Stoicism 39

So I took those core thoughts into prison; I also remembered a lot of attitude-shaping remarks. Here's Epictetus on how to stay off the hook:  

"A man's master is he who is able to confer or remove whatever that man seeks or shuns. Whoever then would be free, let him wish nothing, let him decline nothing, which depends on others; else he must necessarily be a slave." 

And here's why never to beg: 

"For it is better to die of hunger, exempt from fear and guilt, than to live in affluence and with perturbation." 

Begging sets up a demand for quid pro quo, deals, agreements, reprisals—the pits.

If you want to protect yourself from "fear and guilt"—and those are the crucial pincers, the real long-term destroyers of will—you have to get rid of all your instincts to compromise, to meet people halfway. 

You have to learn to stand aloof, never give openings for deals, never level with your adversaries. You have to become what Ivan Denisovich called a "slow-movin' cagey prisoner." 

All that, over the previous three years, I had unknowingly put away for the future. 

So when bailing out of my A-4, after the gang tackling and pummeling was over (it lasted for two or three minutes before a man with a pith helmet got there to blow his police whistle ), I had a very badly broken leg that I felt sure would be with me for life. My hunch turned out to be right. 

Later, I felt some relief—but only minor—from another admonition of Epictetus that I remembered: 

"Lameness is an impediment to the leg, but not to the Will; and say this to yourself with regard to everything that happens. For you will find such things to be an impediment to something else, but not truly to yourself." 

—from James B. Stockdale, Master of My Fate: A Stoic Philosopher in a Hanoi Prison 

Sayings of Ramakrishna 227

Whatever gives happiness in this world contains a bit of Divine enjoyment in it. 

The difference between the two is as between treacle and refined candy. 

Seneca, Moral Letters 58.9

Frugal living can bring one to old age; and to my mind old age is not to be refused any more than it is to be craved. There is a pleasure in being in one's own company as long as possible, when a man has made himself worth enjoying. 
 
The question, therefore, on which we have to record our judgment is, whether one should shrink from extreme old age and should hasten the end artificially, instead of waiting for it to come. 
 
A man who sluggishly awaits his fate is almost a coward, just as he is immoderately given to wine who drains the jar dry and sucks up even the dregs. But we shall ask this question also: "Is the extremity of life the dregs, or is it the clearest and purest part of all, provided only that the mind is unimpaired, and the senses, still sound, give their support to the spirit, and the body is not worn out and dead before its time?" 
 
For it makes a great deal of difference whether a man is lengthening his life or his death. But if the body is useless for service, why should one not free the struggling soul? 
 
Perhaps one ought to do this a little before the debt is due, lest, when it falls due, he may be unable to perform the act. And since the danger of living in wretchedness is greater than the danger of dying soon, he is a fool who refuses to stake a little time and win a hazard of great gain. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 58 
 
As with so many “hot button” topics, we are understandably nervous about discussing suicide. The prospect of dying is frightful enough, and we become all the more uncomfortable with the possibility that it could be by our own hands. 
 
When I have my head on straight, and my passions are not running away with me, I recognize why my life is worth living, and that I do myself a disservice when I think my happiness to be beyond my power. Nature has made it so that a hardship is always an opportunity to live well, where I need not deliberately wish to end my life in order to somehow improve it. 
 
Can there be times, however, when it is fitting to welcome death, or even to speed it along? If I wish to make sense of Seneca’s reflections here, I will need to rightly distinguish the Stoic principles he works from, and to be clear for myself in how I am using my terms. 
 
While I might assume that life is a good, and death is an evil, I should rather approach them as being, in and of themselves, conditions that are indifferent, only becoming beneficial or harmful through their relationship to virtue, the ultimate human value. 
 
There have been times when I have wanted to live, and there have been times when I have wanted to die, and yet through any of that, I should be asking myself only what I need to do in order to act with character and integrity. The rest falls into place after that. 
 
If living longer is most conducive to being as virtuous as I can be, then let me cling to that life. If dying now is most conducive to being as virtuous as I can be, then let me gladly embrace that duty. That I will die is certain—how I will go about dying is up to me. 
 
Therefore, when my continued existence would only be a hindrance to living with excellence, a quality defined by merit over circumstances, I may freely surrender this life. In certain situations, the very act of relinquishing that life might itself be the most noble act of all. 
 
This may not be suicide in the narrow sense, when death is the desired goal, but rather a sacrifice where death is merely a necessary consequence of doing right. I think of the solider who charges forth to protect his friends, or an old aboriginal man who knows when it is finally time for him to quietly disappear into the woods. 
 
When simply extending life restricts the very purpose of life, it may well be time to willingly throw in the towel. 
 
Within only a few years of writing this letter to Lucilius, Seneca would take his own life on the orders of the Emperor Nero. I am sure he did this not because he dreaded living, but rather because he dreaded dishonor the most. 

—Reflection written in 5/2013 

IMAGE: Manuel Dominguez Sanchez, The Death of Seneca (1871) 

Ralph Waldo Emerson 3

The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. 

In the imitator something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's. 

—from Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Divinity College Address 

The Liberal Arts 23

Virgil Solis, The Seven Liberal Arts: Astronomy (c. 1550)

The Liberal Arts 22

Virgil Solis, The Seven Liberal Arts: Music (c. 1550)

The Liberal Arts 21

Virgil Solis, The Seven Liberal Arts: Geometry (c. 1550)

 

The Liberal Arts 20

Virgil Solis, The Seven Liberal Arts: Arithmetic (c. 1550)

The Liberal Arts 19

Virgil Solis, The Seven Liberal Arts: Rhetoric (c. 1550)

The Liberal Arts 18

Virgil Solis, The Seven Liberal Arts: Dialectic (c. 1550)

The Liberal Arts 17

Virgil Solis, The Seven Liberal Arts: Grammar (c. 1550)

The Paris Dance of Death 15

Guyot Marchant, The Paris Dance of Death: The Lawyer and the Minstrel (1485) 

The Paris Dance of Death 14

Guyot Marchant, The Paris Dance of Death: The Physician and the Suitor (1485) 

The Paris Dance of Death 13

Guyot Marchant, The Paris Dance of Death: The Monk and the Usurer (1485) 

Stoic Snippets 220

When you are offended with any man's shameless conduct, immediately ask yourself, "Is it possible, then, that shameless men should not be in the world?" 

It is not possible. 

Do not, then, require what is impossible. For this man also is one of those shameless men who must of necessity be in the world. 

Let the same considerations be present to your mind in the case of the knave, and the faithless man, and of every man who does wrong in any way. 

For at the same time that you do remind yourself that it is impossible that such kind of men should not exist, you will become more kindly disposed towards every one individually. 

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 9.42 

IMAGE: Joos de Momper the Younger, Sodom and Gomorrah (c. 1600) 

Dhammapada 349, 350

If a man is tossed about by doubts, full of strong passions, and yearning only for what is delightful, his thirst will grow more and more, and he will indeed make his fetters strong. 

If a man delights in quieting doubts, and, always reflecting, dwells on what is not delightful, such as the impurity of the body, he certainly will remove, nay, he will cut the fetter of Mara. 

IMAGE: Mara tempting the Buddha