Symposium On
Rules for Self-Improvement
Get thy spindle and distaff ready. God will send the flax.-Old English Proverb.
Not what I have, but what I do, is my kingdom.-Carlyle.
To teach is to learn twice. -Joubert.
Of all the duties, the principal one is to acquire the knowledge of the Supreme Soul; it is the first of all sciences for it alone confers on man immortality.-Manu.
By self-resolve alone can one enter the Path of the Inner Life. -Pravaka.
The wise aim at perfection. The foolish aim at wealth.-Ali ibn abu Talib,
He who knows himself, knows his God.-Koranic Verse.
The great man is not a mere receptacle. What he first says, as a result of his experience, he afterward follows up. The great man is catholic-minded, and not one-sided. The common man is the reverse.-Confucius.
Faults in a superior man are like eclipses of the sun or moon: when he is guilty of a trespass men all see it; and when he is himself again, all look up to him.-Tsze-kung.
Rouse thyself by thyself, examine thyself by thyself; thus self-protected and attentive wilt thou live happily.-Dhammapada.
According to the Proverb, the best things are the most difficult. -Plutarch.
Perseverance is more prevailing than violence- and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.-Plutarch.
The things we have determined wholeheartedly to do are not fulfilled merely by desire, but through painful toil.-Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
I have heard the saying: He who fit-ids instructors for himself comes to the supreme domination; he who says that others are riot equal to himself comes to ruin.-The Analects CCS 1.
The disciple Kung-tu said: "All are equally men, but some are great men and some are little men. How is this?"
Mencius replied: "Those who follow that part of themselves which is great are great men; those who follow that part which is little are little men.-Mencius CCS II.
Do not keep perniciously to your own ideas. Do not study to be uniform. Be scrupulous, yet gentle. Be large-minded like space, whose four terminating points are illimitable and form no particular enclosures. Hold all things in your love.-Kwang-tzu.
Want of harmony in the outer life rises from the want of it in one's inner self; strive to be harmonious.-The Shu King.
He whose mind inclines not toward zeal, exertion, perseverance and struggle, he has not become free from spiritual barrenness. -Ketokhila Sutta (Buddhism).
Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure that there is one rascal less in the world.-Carlyle.