#stoicism

I have always swung back and forth between alienation and relatedness. As a child, I would run away from the beatings, from the obscene words, and always knew that if I could run far enough, then any leaf, any insect, any bird, any breeze could bring me to my true home. I knew I did not belong among people. Whatever they hated about me was a human thing; the nonhuman world has always loved me. I can't remember when it was otherwise. But I have been emotionally crippled by this. There is nothing romantic about being young and angry, or even about turning that anger into art. I go through the motions of living in society, but never feel a part of it. When my family threw me away, every human on earth did likewise. ↗

— Wendy Rose

#alienation #changelings #humans #me #relatedness

Maximum remedium est irae mora. ↗

— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

#stoicism #anger

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment. ↗

— Marcus Aurelius

#distress #mind-over-body #pain #stoicism #attitude

He liked the English and their peculiarities. He liked their stoicism under pressure; on the wall in his factory he kept a copy of a war poster emblazoned with the Crown of King George and underneath the words “Keep Calm and Carry On. ↗

— Natasha Solomons

#stoicism #dreams

Mostly because I’ve realized what a lame teenager I was. I was always home at the stroke of midnight; I didn’t like drinking mash; I didn’t have sex. I read books and had an inferiority complex because I was afraid to do all that other stuff. I don’t know anything about being a badass punk rocker. ↗

— Karin Tidbeck

#lost-dreams #teenager #dreams

Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day. ↗

— Markus Zusak

#sadness #stoicism #imagination

There will never come a time when I will be able to resist my emotions. ↗

— Louise Erdrich

#stoicism #love

My boyfriends have all been as stoical as queen's guards. They'd been patient, committed, and dispassionate, and I'd had to really debase myself to extract any emotion, either grin or grimace, from them. ↗

— Koren Zailckas

#ex-boyfriends #love #relationships #stoicism #love

People hide their truest nature. I understood that; I even applauded it. What sort of world would it be if people bled all over the sidewalks, if they wept under trees, smacked whomever they despised, kissed strangers, revealed themselves? ↗

— Alice Hoffman

#stoicism #nature

How do you defeat terrorism? Don’t be terrorized. ↗

— Salman Rushdie

#stoicism #terrorism #terrorism