BOOK 9 -23

Children's tantrums and toys, 'tiny spirits carrying corpses' - the Underworld in the Odyssey strikes more real.

BOOK 9 -23

Just as you are a complimentary part of a social system, so too your every action should compliment a life of social principle. If any action of yours, then, does not have direct or indirect relation to the social end, it pulls your life apart and destroys its unity. It is a kind of sedition, like an individual in a democracy unilaterally resigning from the common harmony.

BOOK 9 -22

Hurry to your own directing mind, to the mind of the Whole, and to the mind of this particular man. To your own mind, to make its understanding just; to the mind of the Whole, to recall what you are part of; to this man's mind, to see whether there is ignorance or design - and at the same time to reflect that his is a kindred spirit.

BOOK 9 -21

The termination of an activity, the pause when an impulse or judgement is finished - this sort is a sort of death, but no harm in it. Turn now to the stages of your life - childhood, say adolescence, prime, old age. Here too each change a death: anything fearful in that? Turn now to your life with your grandfather, then your mother, then with your [adoptive] father. And as you find many other examples of dissolution, change, or termination, ask yourself : 'Was there anything to fear?' So too there is nothing to fear in the termination, the pause, and the change  of your your life.

BOOK 9 -20

You should leave another's wrong where it lies.

BOOK 9 -19

All things are in the process of change. You yourself are subject to constant alteration and gradual decay. So too is the whole universe.

BOOK 9 -18

Penetrate into their directing minds, and you will see what sort of critics you fear - and what poor critics they are of themselves.

BOOK 9 -17

A stone thrown in the air: nothing bad for it on the way down or good for it on the way up.

BOOK 9 -16

Good or ill for the rational social being lies not in feeling but in action: just as also his own virtue or vice shows not in what he feels, but in what he does.

BOOK 9 -15

Mere things stand isolated outside our doors, with no knowledge or report of themselves. What then reports on them? Our directing mind.

BOOK 9 -14

All things are the same: familiar in experience, transient in time, sordid in substance. Everything now is as it was in the days of those we have buried.

BOOK 9 -13

Today I escaped from all bothering circumstances - or rather I threw them out. They were nothing external, but inside me, just my own judgements.

BOOK 9 -12

Work. Don't work as a miserable drudge, or in any expectation of pity or admiration. One aim only: action or inaction as civic cause demands.

BOOK 9 -11

If you can , show them the better way. if you cannot, remember that this is why you have the gift of kindness. The gods too are kind to such people, and in their benevolence even help them achieve some ends - health, wealth, fame. You can do it too. Or tell me -who is stopping you?

BOOK 9 -10

Man, god, and the universe all bear fruit, each in its own due season. No matter if common use confines the strict sense of 'bearing fruit' to vines and the like. Reason too has its fruit, both universal and particular; other things grow from it which share its own nature.

BOOK 9 -9-4

Look then at what is happening right now. Only the intelligent creatures have now forgotten that urge to be unified with each other: only  here will you see no confluence. They may run from it, but nevertheless they are overtaken: such is the power of nature. Look carefully and you see what I mean. You are more likely to find earth not returning to earth than a man cut off from man.

BOOK 9 -9-3

So right from the beginning among the irrational creatures there could be seen hives, flocks,birds rearing their young, a sort of love: already there were animate souls at work there, and in the higher orders an increasingly strong collective bond which is not found in plants or stones or wood. And among the rational creatures there were civic communities, friendships, households, assemblies: and in war treaties  and truces. Among yet higher things there exists a sort of unity even at a distance, as with the stars. Thus the upper reaches of being can effect fellow-feeling even when the members are far apart.

BOOK 9 -9-2

So too everything which shares in a common intelligent nature tends equally, or yet more so, to its own kind. Proportionate to its superiority over the rest, it is that much readier to mix an blend with its family.

BOOK 9 -9

All things which share some common quality tend to their own kind. Everything earthy inclines to earth. Everything watery flows together, and the same with air, so they need physical obstacles to force a separation. Fire rises upwards because of the element fire, but is nevertheless so eager to help the ignition of any fire here below that any material which is a little too dry is easily ignited, for the lack of ingredients which hinder combustion.

BOOK 9 -8

Irrational creatures share in one animate soul, and rational creatures partake in one intelligent soul: just as is one earth for all the things of the earth, and one light to see by, one air to breath for all of us who have sight and life.

BOOK 9 -7

Erase the print of imagination, stop impulse, quench desire: keep your directing mind its own master.

BOOK 9 -6

These will suffice: the present certainty of judgement, the present social action, the present disposition well content with any effect of an external cause.

BOOK 9 -5-6

There can often be wrongs of omission as well commission.