Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.
Seneca The YoungerRead
The man who spends his time choosing one resort after another in a hunt for peace and quiet will in every place he visits find something to prevent him from relaxing.
Interpretation
True peace comes from within, not from external circumstances or locations.
Seneca highlights the futility of seeking peace and tranquility through external changes and locations, suggesting that it is an internal state that must be cultivated regardless of one's surroundings. The constant searching for the perfect place to relax can lead to disappointment, as external factors will always pose distractions if one does not find inner serenity.
In practice
During a meditation retreat, I shared the quote to emphasize the importance of finding internal calm.
Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.
No tree becomes rooted and sturdy unless many a wind assails it. For by its very tossing it tightens its grip and plants its roots more securely; the fragile trees are those that have grown in a sunny valley.
Slavery takes hold of few, but many take hold of slavery.
To be able to endure odium is the first art to be learned by those who aspire to power.
Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness.
Loyalty is the holiest good in the human heart.
There is immeasurably more left inside than what comes out in words.
We depend on our surroundings obliquely to embody the moods and ideas we respect and then to remind us of them. We look to our buildings to hold us, like a kind of psychological mould, to a helpful vision of ourselves. We arrange around us material forms which communicate to us what we need — but are at constant risk of forgetting what we need — within. We turn to wallpaper, benches, paintings and streets to staunch the disappearance of our true selves.
Never does one feel oneself so utterly helpless as in trying to speak comfort for great bereavement.
Born with blue spectacles, you would think the world was blue and never be conscious of the existence of the distorting glass.
and for a moment he held out his hands as if to steady himself or as if to bless the ground there or perhaps as if to slow the world that was rushing away and seemed to care nothing for the old or the young or rich or poor or dark or pale or he or she. Nothing for their struggles, nothing for their names. Nothing for the living or the dead.
God made me an Indian, but not a reservation Indian.
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