Art and Beauty

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  “But the voice of our age seems by no means favorable to art, at all events to that kind of art to which my inquiry is directed. The course of events has given a direction to the genius of the time that threatens to remove it continually further from the ideal of art. For art has to leave reality, it has to raise itself bodily above necessity and neediness; for art is the daughter of freedom, and it requires its prescriptions and rules to be furnished by the necessity of spirits and not by that of matter. But in our day it is necessity, neediness, that prevails, and bends a degraded humanity under its iron yoke.” —J. C. Friedrich von Schiller. “Letters upon the Æsthetic Education of Man.” (1795)

Stoicism and Asthma

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Springtime gives me no blooming choice. I'm convinced that allergies are like people: they exist to test your philosophy. 

"But I have been consigned, so to speak, to one special ailment. I do not know why I should call it by its Greek name; for it is well enough described as “shortness of breath.” Its attack is of very brief duration, like that of a squall at sea; it usually ends within an hour. Who indeed could breathe his last for long? I have passed through all the ills and dangers of the flesh, but nothing seems to me more troublesome than this. And naturally so; for anything else may be called illness, but this is a sort of continued “last gasp.” Hence physicians call it “practicing how to die.” (Seneca, Moral Letter 54, On Asthma and Death)

"If it’s endurable, then endure it. Stop complaining,” he said. “If it’s unendurable . . . then stop complaining." (Marcus Aurelius)

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