To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are obstructions.

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 you thinking about?” you can respond at once (and truthfully) that you are thinking this or thinking that.

Stalks of wheat bending under their own weight. The furrowed brow of the lion. Flecks of foam on the boar’s mouth. And other things. If you look at them in isolation there’s nothing beautiful about them, and yet by supplementing nature they enrich it and draw us in. And anyone with a feeling for nature—a deeper sensitivity—will find it all gives pl

The way loaves of bread split open on top in the oven; the ridges are just by-products of the baking, and yet pleasing, somehow: they rouse our appetite without our knowing why.

It’s a natural thing. And nothing natural is evil.

Then what can guide us? Only philosophy. Which means making sure that the power within stays safe and free from assault, superior to pleasure and pain, doing nothing randomly or dishonestly and with imposture, not dependent on anyone else’s doing something or not doing it. And making sure that it accepts what happens and what it is dealt as coming

The present is all that they can give up, since that is all you have, and what you do not have, you cannot lose.

If it doesn’t harm your character, how can it harm your life?

You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.