9781945186240

x. That to expect bad people not to injure others is crazy. It’s to ask the
impossible. And to let them behave like that to other people but expect
them to exempt you is arrogant—the act of a tyrant.
19. Four habits of thought to watch for, and erase from your mind when
you catch them. Tell yourself:
• This thought is unnecessary.
• This one is destructive to the people around you.
• This wouldn’t be what you really think (to say what you don’t think
—the definition of absurdity).
And the fourth reason for self-reproach: that the more divine part of you
has been beaten and subdued by the degraded mortal part—the body and its
stupid self-indulgence.
20. Your spirit and the fire contained within you are drawn by their
nature upward. But they comply with the world’s designs and submit to
being mingled here below. And the elements of earth and water in you are
drawn by their nature downward. But are forced to rise, and take up a
position not their own. So even the elements obey the world—when ordered
and compelled—and man their stations until the signal to abandon them
arrives.
So why should your intellect be the only dissenter—the only one
complaining about its posting? It’s not as if anything is being forced on it.
Only what its own nature requires. And yet it refuses to comply, and sets off
in the opposite direction. Because to be drawn toward what is wrong and
self-indulgent, toward anger and fear and pain, is to revolt against nature.
And for the mind to complain about anything that happens is to desert its
post. It was created to show reverence—respect for the divine—no less than
to act justly. That too is an element of coexistence and a prerequisite for
justice.
21. “If you don’t have a consistent goal in life, you can’t live it in a
consistent way.”
Unhelpful, unless you specify a goal.