This continuation page contains additional source-backed quotations not shown in the initial 70-quotation overview. Return to the topic guide and browse collection.
“You can control nothing but your own mind.”
Bennett redirects the desire to manage other people or circumstances toward the sphere he treats as directly governable: one’s own response and attention.
The Human Machine, discussion of mental control. The maxim belongs to Bennett’s period self-discipline philosophy and should not be read as a clinical claim that thoughts or symptoms are always voluntarily controllable.
“What a man is and has in himself,—in a word personality, with all it entails, is the only immediate and direct factor in his happiness and welfare.”
Personality is presented as the nearest and most continuous condition of well-being, because possessions and reputation affect life only through the person who experiences them.
The Wisdom of Life; Schopenhauer argues that personality has a more direct relation to happiness than property, rank, or external opinion.
“Simplicity is a state of mind.”
Simplicity is defined first as an inward orientation rather than a particular income, occupation, costume or social class.
The Simple Life, Chapter II, Mary Louise Hendee translation, Project Gutenberg #23092; Wagner is defining the “essence of simplicity.”
“Where the natural law rules in the heart, disorder vanishes.”
Wagner links simplicity with inner order, arguing that clear governing principles can reduce the confusion produced by competing impulses.
The Simple Life, Chapter II, Mary Louise Hendee translation, Project Gutenberg #23092; the sentence belongs to Wagner’s moral account of inward order.
“Happy he who is able to reclaim himself, who finds the way back to simplicity.”
Returning to simplicity is presented as recovery of one’s own direction after distraction, excess or social complication has pulled attention outward.
The Simple Life, Chapter II, Mary Louise Hendee translation, Project Gutenberg #23092; Wagner closes the section by describing simplicity as something a person can recover.
“Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.”
Helen Burns argues that sustained resentment consumes a life already limited by time; her position favors releasing animosity while still naming another person’s conduct as unjust.
Jane Eyre, Lowood sequence, Project Gutenberg #1260. Helen Burns says this after Jane recounts Mrs. Reed’s cruelty. Helen then explicitly says she can forgive the person while abhorring the crime, so the passage does not require pretending the wrong was acceptable.
“He should be able to maintain a festal brightness and cherishing glow in his bosom, which makes all bright and genial for him.”
The narrator imagines an inward source of warmth capable of sustaining a person when surroundings offer little encouragement.
Shirley; narrative reflection in a novel rather than direct personal testimony. The image of inner brightness is literary metaphor and is retained as such.
“For I now call a freedom from anxiety a security, on which freedom a happy life depends.”
Cicero treats inner security as freedom from destabilizing anxiety, making mental steadiness an important condition of a genuinely happy and self-directed life.
Tusculan Disputations, Book V, section XIV, represented by Project Gutenberg #14988. Cicero defines security parenthetically as freedom from anxiety while arguing that a happy life must rest on stable goods and virtue rather than vulnerable externals. It remains ancient philosophical psychology mediated by translation, not modern clinical anxiety-treatment evidence.
“Seek not that the things which happen should happen as you wish.”
Peace becomes more possible when desire stops demanding that reality conform perfectly to preference before a useful response can begin.
Enchiridion, section VIII, George Long translation; the following clause advises wishing events to be as they are.
“True instruction is this:—to learn to wish that each thing should come to pass as it does.”
Stoic instruction begins by reducing the conflict between reality and demand, leaving judgment and action to work with what actually occurs.
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus, saying XXVI, Hastings Crossley translation.
“Do no violence to yourself, respect in yourself the oscillations of feeling.”
Self-respect here means refusing to force inner life into an artificial uniformity; changing feelings can be observed and treated with patience instead of self-aggression.
Amiel's Journal, entry dated April 28, 1852, in Mary Augusta Ward’s public-domain translation; Amiel counsels patience with the movement of feeling.
“Descend still deeper into yourself, until you hear nothing but a clear and undivided voice, a voice which does away with doubt and brings with it persuasion, light and serenity.”
Amiel portrays reflection as a movement beneath mental noise toward a clearer judgment, where conviction is accompanied by serenity rather than by restless argument with oneself.
Amiel's Journal, 1851 diary entry, translated by Mary Augusta Ward; the passage belongs to Amiel’s introspective effort to reach clarity beneath divided feeling.
“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee.”
Steadiness of attention is linked with steadiness of inner life, making calm partly a matter of where the mind remains fixed.
Isaiah 26:3 in the King James Version.
“Self-control is strength; Right Thought is mastery; Calmness is power.”
Strength is defined internally: governing thought and response creates steadiness that is more durable than reacting to every disturbance.
As a Man Thinketh, closing lines of “Serenity”; capitalization follows the represented public-domain edition.
“Where there are wrong conditions of mind there is bondage and unrest; where there are right conditions of mind there is freedom and peace.”
Allen uses a sharp contrast between mental unrest and peace to argue that repeated inner conditions shape how freedom or bondage is experienced within his conduct-of-life philosophy.
Out from the Heart, “Mental Conditions and Their Effects,” represented New York R. F. Fenno & Company edition, Project Gutenberg #74178. The sentence introduces Allen’s table of harmful and beneficial mental conditions; its moral-philosophical categories are preserved as historical argument rather than modern psychological diagnosis.
“Holiness alone is undying peace.”
Allen contrasts lasting peace with temporary comfort or outward victory, then immediately connects the durable state he describes with self-control and an increasing orientation toward wisdom.
The Way of Peace, “The Realization of Perfect Peace,” Project Gutenberg #10740. The sentence follows Allen’s contrast between temporary peace from comfort or worldly victory and what he calls the enduring “Peace of Heaven”; the theological framework is retained rather than recast as clinical advice.
“This inward peace, this silence, this harmony, this Love, is the Kingdom of Heaven.”
Allen describes spiritual fulfillment as an inward condition of peace, harmony, and love rather than as a reward measured primarily by external circumstance.
The Way of Peace; the sentence belongs to Allen’s account of the inward qualities he associates with spiritual peace and selfless love.
“Only the Peace of Heaven endures through all trial, and only the selfless heart can know the Peace of Heaven.”
The peace Allen values is tested by adversity: he associates durability under trial with a heart less dominated by self-centered demand and reactive desire.
The Way of Peace; Allen contrasts temporary comfort with a spiritual peace that he says remains stable through trial.
“To be in the world and yet not of the world is the highest perfection, the most blessed peace, is to achieve the greatest victory.”
Allen defines peace as freedom from being inwardly ruled by surrounding pressures, presenting self-command and spiritual detachment as a deeper victory than external conquest.
The Way of Peace; Allen contrasts inward spiritual independence with being carried along by the impulses and conflicts of the surrounding world.
“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:”
Attention is directed to ordinary flowers as a corrective to anxious preoccupation, making observation itself part of the teaching about worry.
Matthew 6:28, King James Version; Jesus points listeners to the lilies while discussing anxiety about clothing and material provision.
“The mind is its own place.”
The statement emphasizes how mental framing can alter the experience of circumstances, for good or ill.
Paradise Lost (1667), Book I, line 254; retained legacy short extract from the fuller Satan sentence beginning ‘The mind is its own place’ and continuing into line 255. It is the same underlying passage as the longer catalog record, not a separate fifth passage.
“This is true freedom, a good practical sort of immortality.”
Muir describes freedom as absorption in immediate natural experience, where ordinary anxiety about saving time temporarily loses its force.
My First Summer in the Sierra, June 13; the sentence follows his reflection on not hurrying like the trees and stars.
“Life seems neither long nor short, and we take no more heed to save time or make haste than do the trees and stars.”
Immersion in the mountains changes the felt pressure of time, replacing hurry with attention to rhythms that do not follow human schedules.
My First Summer in the Sierra, June 13 journal entry.
“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.”
Muir presents mountain experience as something that can restore perspective and emotional steadiness through direct contact with wild landscapes.
Our National Parks; Muir follows the invitation with an account of nature’s peace flowing into the observer, linking mountains with restoration and attention.
“Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights.”
In the work’s poetic frame, inward knowledge exists before it is fully verbalized; the line values listening closely to one’s own interior understanding without claiming that intuition is automatically infallible.
The Prophet, section “Self-Knowledge.” A man asks Almustafa to speak about self-knowledge, and Almustafa answers with this line before describing the heart’s knowledge and the self as a boundless sea. The represented wording is the 1923 text preserved by Wikisource/Project Gutenberg #58585.
“He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty.”
Self-command is valued above outward dominance, redefining strength as the ability to govern one’s response.
Proverbs 16:32 in the King James Version; the first comparison is quoted here.
“Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.”
Guarding inner life is presented as practical because attention and motives influence conduct downstream.
Proverbs 4:23 in the King James Version.
“Purity and stillness give the correct law to all under heaven.”
The line gives stillness a governing role: clarity and quiet are treated as conditions from which more ordered action can emerge.
Tao Teh King, chapter 45, James Legge translation; the sentence follows the claim that being still overcomes heat.
“Gravity is the root of lightness; stillness, the ruler of movement.”
Movement is most stable when it has a quiet center; the aphorism makes composure a governing condition rather than the opposite of effective action.
Tao Teh King, chapter 26, James Legge translation; the chapter applies this relation between gravity and stillness to the conduct of a ruler.
“Who is content needs fear no shame. Who knows to stop incurs no blame.”
Knowing what is enough protects dignity from endless comparison and acquisition; the ability to stop becomes part of self-respect rather than evidence of insufficient ambition.
Tao Teh King, chapter 44, James Legge translation; these compact poetic lines follow a contrast among fame, life, and wealth.
“Therefore the sufficiency of contentment is an enduring and unchanging sufficiency.”
Contentment supplies a form of enoughness that does not depend on continually acquiring more, making inward sufficiency less vulnerable to comparison and appetite.
Tao Teh King, chapter 46, James Legge translation; the statement follows warnings about ambition, discontent, and the wish to keep getting.
“Who can (make) the muddy water (clear)? Let it be still, and it will gradually become clear.”
The muddy-water image makes stillness a condition for clarity: agitation can keep disturbance suspended, while enough quiet allows what is clouding perception to settle without force.
Tao Teh King, Chapter 15, James Legge translation, Project Gutenberg #216. The next sentence asks how the condition of rest is secured and answers through the gradual relation between movement and rest; the passage belongs to Taoist philosophy, not a clinical relaxation technique.
“I cannot ever endure to write anything to you unless with mind at ease and untroubled and free.”
Marcus links intimate correspondence with mental composure: he wants to write to Fronto from an unhurried and settled state rather than forcing a personal letter while distracted or troubled.
Project Gutenberg #2680, correspondence appendix, reference iii. 21. Marcus explains why he had not written earlier while discussing Fronto’s health. This is a personal letter-writing preference in context, not a general productivity prescription.
“Take away thy opinion, and then there is taken away the complaint, “I have been harmed.””
The statement asks whether part of suffering is sustained by the story attached to an event rather than by the event alone.
Meditations, Book IV, in George Long’s translation.
“That faith and self-respect had early been awakened which must always lead, at last, to an outward serenity and an inward peace.”
Self-respect and inward faith are presented as foundations that can survive adversity and gradually produce greater steadiness in both outward life and inner experience.
Woman in the Nineteenth Century, in the discussion of Miranda; Fuller explicitly connects awakened self-respect with serenity and inward peace.
“The most manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness.”
Montaigne associates wisdom with a settled, clear disposition rather than with performative gloom or intellectual severity.
Essays of Montaigne, Book I, Chapter XXV, ‘Of the Education of Children,’ Charles Cotton translation edited by William Carew Hazlitt (1877); Project Gutenberg Volume 05 #3585 / Complete Essays #3600. The cheerfulness sentence belongs to Montaigne’s account of philosophy as forming a serene, active way of life rather than a gloomy scholastic display.
“’Tis my opinion that a man should lend himself to others, and only give himself to himself.”
Montaigne distinguishes participating in other people’s affairs from surrendering one’s whole inward life to them: engagement can be generous without allowing every external demand to possess the will.
Essays of Montaigne, Book III, Chapter X, “Of Managing the Will,” Charles Cotton translation; Project Gutenberg Volume 18 #3598 / Complete Essays #3600. Montaigne describes lending oneself to external affairs without allowing them to possess the whole will.
“We must learn to suffer what we cannot evade; our life, like the harmony of the world, is composed of contrary things.”
Montaigne treats an imperfect mixture of pleasant and painful conditions as part of ordinary life: wisdom includes learning to live with what cannot be escaped instead of demanding a life made only of agreeable notes.
Essays of Montaigne, Book III, Chapter XIII, “Of Experience,” Charles Cotton translation; Project Gutenberg Volume 19 #3599 / Complete Essays #3600. Montaigne compares life’s unavoidable mixture of pleasant and painful conditions to harmony made from contrary tones.
“He who has learned the true art of living will not waste his energies in friction, which accomplishes nothing.”
The metaphor treats needless fretting and interpersonal friction as expenditure of energy that produces no useful result.
Cheerfulness as a Life Power; Project Gutenberg #18394. Marden is making a practical-moral argument, not a clinical claim.
“And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds.”
Peace is described as guarding both thought and feeling even when circumstances are not fully explained or controlled.
Philippians 4:7 in the King James Version; excerpt before the concluding phrase.
“I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, LORD, only makest me dwell in safety.”
Rest becomes possible when anxiety is answered by a sense of safety rather than by continued vigilance.
Psalm 4:8 in the King James Version.
“Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God.”
The speaker names inner dejection directly and then answers it with hope, preserving the reality of sorrow while refusing to make despair the final word.
Psalm 42:11, King James Version; the psalm repeatedly addresses a downcast and disquieted soul while directing attention toward hope.
“If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs.”
Composure under collective panic is treated as a form of practical courage and judgment.
If—, opening line; the next line describes being blamed by those around you.
“Pour forth thy Fervours for a healthful Mind, Obedient Passions, and a Will resign'd;”
Johnson’s closing prayer prioritizes soundness of mind, governed passions and a will capable of acceptance over many external forms of success.
The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), explicitly devotional closing movement, Wikisource first-edition scan leaf 41. “Pour forth thy Fervours for a healthful Mind, Obedient Passions, and a Will resign’d” belongs to Johnson’s concluding prayer for inward goods, patience and faith. “Healthful Mind” is preserved as historical religious-moral language and is not presented as modern medical or mental-health advice.
“Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.”
Seneca argues against postponing life into an imagined future and asks the reader to treat the present day as complete enough for deliberate living.
Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter 101.
“No man can have a peaceful life who thinks too much about lengthening it.”
An obsession with extending life can undermine the peace of the life already present, because fear of ending displaces attention from living.
Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter 4.
“Learn how to feel joy.”
Joy is presented as a skill of character rather than a lucky mood produced by favorable external circumstances.
Letter 23, on the true joy which comes from philosophy.
“God is near you, he is with you, he is within you.”
The line turns attention inward, suggesting that moral seriousness and steadiness are not dependent on external display or distance.
Letter 41 argues that the divine and the noble life are encountered within a person’s moral character.
“It is a characteristic of real joy that it never ceases.”
Durable joy is defined by continuity; if it collapses with every external change, Seneca would not count it as the deepest kind.
Letter 59 describes philosophical joy as stable rather than dependent on circumstances.
“It is above all things necessary to form a true estimate of oneself.”
A realistic estimate of one’s abilities and limits supports both confidence and humility, reducing the instability that comes from either self-contempt or exaggerated self-belief.
Of Peace of Mind, section VI, Aubrey Stewart translation (1889), cross-checked against Project Gutenberg #64576 and Wikisource. The sentence opens Seneca’s advice to form a true estimate of oneself before matching undertakings to one’s actual abilities and temperament.
“Have confidence in yourself, and believe that you are proceeding on the right path.”
Seneca makes self-confidence a condition of steadiness: tranquility depends partly on trusting a course that has been examined rather than continually surrendering judgment to outside pressure.
Of Peace of Mind, section II, Aubrey Stewart translation in Minor Dialogues Together with the Dialogue on Clemency (1889), cross-checked against Project Gutenberg #64576 and the complete Wikisource transcription. Seneca tells Serenus to have confidence in himself and believe he is proceeding on the right path while defining the steady condition he calls peace of mind.
“Solitude will cure us when we are sick of crowds, and crowds will cure us when we are sick of solitude.”
Neither isolation nor company is treated as a universal cure; Seneca recommends changing conditions when either extreme becomes mentally exhausting, favoring flexible balance over rigid withdrawal.
Of Peace of Mind, section XVII, Aubrey Stewart translation (1889), cross-checked against Project Gutenberg #64576 and Wikisource. Seneca recommends alternating solitude and company so that each corrects weariness with the other, then continues into advice about relaxation and rest.
“Yet nothing sets us free from these alternations of hope and fear so well as always fixing some limit to our successes.”
Seneca links tranquility with limits: endless ambition keeps hope and fear alternating, while defining enough can reduce dependence on uncertain future gains.
Of Peace of Mind, section X, Aubrey Stewart translation (1889), cross-checked against Project Gutenberg #64576 and Wikisource. Seneca argues that voluntarily setting limits to success can interrupt the repeated alternation of hope and fear and prevent ambition from expanding without bounds.
“All things that are still to come lie in uncertainty; live straightway!”
Uncertainty about the future becomes an argument for using the available present rather than waiting for perfect guarantees.
On the Shortness of Life, Chapter IX; follows Seneca’s contrast between what is in Fortune’s hands and what is presently one’s own.
“Life will follow the path it started upon, and will neither reverse nor check its course.”
Time continues without negotiating with status or preference, making acceptance of its direction a reason to use the available part more deliberately.
On the Shortness of Life, Chapter VIII; the sentence follows Seneca’s warning that lost years will not be returned.
“Victory breeds hatred, for the conquered is unhappy. He who has given up both victory and defeat, he, the contented, is happy.”
The verse questions identity built around winning: contentment becomes more available when life is not constantly interpreted as a contest that somebody else must lose.
Dhammapada 201, Max Müller translation; the line appears in the chapter on happiness and contrasts competitive victory with contentment.
“Health is the greatest of gifts, contentedness the best riches; trust is the best of relationships, Nirvana the highest happiness.”
The verse ranks contentment above possession by calling it the best form of wealth, linking well-being with enoughness, trustworthy relationship, and spiritual liberation.
Dhammapada 204, Max Müller translation; the final reference to Nirvana makes the verse explicitly Buddhist rather than a purely secular maxim.
“First keep thyself in peace, and then shalt thou be able to be a peacemaker towards others.”
The devotional instruction makes inward steadiness prior to outward peacemaking: a person who is internally ruled by agitation will struggle to reduce conflict in relationships around them.
The Imitation of Christ, Book II, Chapter III, “Of the good, peaceable man,” William Benham translation, Project Gutenberg #1653.
“He who binds to himself a joy does the winged life destroy.”
Trying to possess a joyful moment permanently can damage it, while accepting impermanence allows experience to remain alive and free.
Short poem commonly titled “Eternity”; Blake contrasts grasping with the passing movement of joy.
“calmness amid storm”
The compact metaphor describes steadiness under pressure: difficulty remains present, but it need not dictate the quality of judgment or conduct.
Aequanimitas, 1889 valedictory address. Osler uses the phrase while defining imperturbability for physicians and surgeons; it is retained as a professional ideal in its historical medical setting.
“Sweet is the lore which Nature brings.”
Nature is presented as a source of knowledge that can complement formal study by training attention and receptiveness.
The Tables Turned; the line follows Wordsworth’s claim that a vernal wood can teach moral insight.
