“If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgement of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgement now.”
Variant: If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
Source: Meditations
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Marcus Aurelius 400
Emperor of Ancient Rome 121–180Related quotes
“External things are not the problem. It's your assessment of them. Which you can erase right now.”
Hays translation
Source: Meditations (c. AD 121–180), Book VIII, 47
“People and things are processes. Judgements convert them into fixed states.”
Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969)
Context: You cannot avoid making judgements but you can become more conscious of the way in which you make them. This is critically important because once we judge someone or something we tend to stop thinking about them or it. Which means, among other things, that we behave in response to our judgements rather than to that to which is being judged. People and things are processes. Judgements convert them into fixed states. This is one reason that judgements are often self-fulfilling. If a boy, for example, is judged as being "dumb" and a "nonreader" early in his school career, that judgement sets into motion a series of teacher behaviors that cause the judgement to become self-fulfilling. What we need to do then, if we are seriously interested in helping students to become good learners, is to suspend or delay judgements about them. One manifestation of this is the ungraded elementary school. But you can practice suspending judgement yourself tomorrow. It doesn't require any major changes in anything in the school except your own behavior.
Variant: Live, laugh, love.
When you can feel someone else's pain and joy as if it's your own, thats when you know you really love them - Tina Lowell
Source: Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood
"The Art of Criticism III: Evaluating Performances", American Record Guide, September 1, 2009
At a press conference, as quoted in U.K. Leader Boris Johnson Boasts He Has Shaken Hands With Coronavirus Patients https://www.newsweek.com/boris-johnson-says-shaken-hands-coronavirus-patients-1490214 by Khaleda Rahman, 3 March 2020, Newsweek.
2020s, 2020
Source: Why People Don't Heal and How They Can: A Practical Programme for Healing Body, Mind and Spirit
Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.17