May 13

Everyone must solve the questions of the meaning of life and death for themselves.

1

A wise person demands everything only of himself; a worthless person demands everything of others.

— Chinese wisdom

2

The soul does not learn; it only remembers that which it has always known.

— Daud al Ghafir

3

Every great man is always being helped by everybody; for his gift is to get good out of all things and all persons.

— John Ruskin

4

A political victory, a rise in rents, the recovery of your sick, or return of your absent friend, or some other quite external event, raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.

— Emerson

5

In vain will you search for answers to the questions of the purpose of life in the external world. The answers to these questions of yours exist within you, but only as germs. You must grow your answers by leading a good life. This is the only path to wisdom.

— Lucy Mallory

6

Woe to him who wants a companion, because the only faithful companion is he himself, but the one who searches is unfit to be the companion of even himself.

— Thoreau

7

Memorized truth sticks to us like an artificial limb, a false tooth, a wax nose and, most of all, like a nose of someone else’s skin. On the other hand, the truth we obtain by our own thinking is like a real limb; it alone truly belongs to us.

— Schopenhauer

If, to the questions of life and death, a person accepts the answers of others, of wise people who had lived before him, then the selection and acknowledgement of these answers still depends on him.