Quotes about Clarity

You need to avoid certain things in your train of thought: everything random, everything irrelevant. And certainly everything self-important or malicious. You need to get used to winnowing your thoughts, so that if someone says, What are your thinking about? you can respond at once (and truthfully) that you are thinking this or thinking that.

In your actions, don't procrastinate. In your conversations, don't confuse. In your thoughts, don't wander. In your soul, don't be passive or aggressive. In your life, don't be all about business.

When you deal with irrational animals, with things and circumstances, be generous and straightforward. You are rational; they are not.

Concentrate every minute like a Roman—like a man—on doing what's in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can—if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable.

Why all this guesswork? You can see what needs to be done. If you can see the road, follow it.

Stir up thy mind, and recall thy wits again from thy natural dreams, and visions, and when thou art perfectly awoken, and canst perceive that they were but dreams that troubled thee, as one newly awakened out of another kind of sleep look upon these worldly things with the same mind as thou didst upon those, that thou sawest in thy sleep.

Now forget what they think of you. Be satisfied if you can live the rest of your life, however short, as your nature demands. Focus on that, and don't let anything distract you. You've wandered all over and finally realized that you never found what you were after: how to live. Not in syllogisms, not in money, or fame, or self-indulgence. Nowhere.

22. Not to be driven this way and that, but always to behave with justice and see things as they are.

Don't stray, but do what's right whenever you're moved to act, and stick with what's clear and certain whenever you think.

He blind, who cannot see with the eyes of his understanding.

To righteousness, in speaking the truth freely, and without ambiguity; and in doing all things justly and discreetly.

Reason is free from hatred, has no desire to harm anyone or anything, and will never direct you to do evil. Reason works to the benefit of all things.