Ataraxia Quotes

Ataraxia, she had named that magic sword. Inner Peace.

The purpose of all knowledge, metaphysical as well as scientific, is to achieve what Epicurus called ataraxia, freedom from irrational fears and anxieties of all sorts—in brief, peace of mind.

Cassian’s waiting for you, Nesta,” Azriel said—tone gentling. “Take off the Mask.” Nesta stayed silent, Ataraxia ready in her hand. One swipe, and Azriel would be dead. “He’s waiting for you at the House of Wind,” Azriel went on. “At home.” Another blink from Nesta. The silver fire banked a little. Like whoever Cassian was, and whatever the House of Wind was … they might be the only things capable of fighting the siren song of the Mask.

Going out to the garden is to go on a holiday; when you travel amongst the flowers, your body touches heaven and your mind tastes the secrets of ataraxia!

The former breathes only peace and liberty; he desires only to live and be free from labor; even the ataraxia of the Stoic falls far short of his profound indifference to every other object.

Stoicism for show: to be an enthusiast of nil admirari, an hysteric of ataraxia.

Apathist is a someone who understands his limitations and the current situation, accepts them, works with what he knows on what he gets, doing his best and being content with that alone irrespective of the ultimate outcome. He will not indulge in exploring other philosophical positions for he will always be anchored by his strong sense of realism unwaveringly committing himself to it. He is not afraid or ashamed of saying that he does not care when the topic delves into theology or supernaturalism for his knowledge roots him to the present moment, as limited as it maybe. This knowledge is however functional. As a consequence, he lives in a state of apathia and ataraxia which are his ultimate goal. To him, what does not affect his present reality need not be dwelled upon.

[I]n other words, we should live with due knowledge of the course of things in the world. For whenever a man in any way loses self-control, or is struck down by a misfortune, grows angry, or loses heart, he shows in this way that he finds things different from what he expected, and consequently that he laboured under a mistake, did not know the world and life, did not know how at every step the will of the individual is crossed and thwarted by the chance of inanimate nature, by contrary aims and intentions, even by the malice inspired in others. Therefore either he has not used his reason to arrive at a general knowledge of this characteristic of life, or he lacks the power of judgement, when he does not again recognize in the particular what he knows in general, and when he is therefore surprised by it and loses his self-control. Thus every keen pleasure is an error, an illusion, since no attained wish can permanently satisfy, and also because every possession and every happiness is only lent by chance for an indefinite time, and can therefore be demanded back in the next hour. Thus both originate from defective knowledge. Therefore the wise man always holds himself aloof from jubilation and sorrow, and no event disturbs his ἀταραξία [ataraxia]." —from_The World as Will and Representation_. Translated from the German by E. F. J. Paye in two volumes: volume I, p. 88

Ataraxia looks like a perfect remedy for stress and anxiety for those who can achieve it. If you persuade yourself that you can deal equitably with every possible incident of life, then you will be able to face life’s complexity and you will always be calm. And is there anything better than inner peace and tranquility?

The Stoics also articulated the mood that we should aspire to as our default setting—ataraxia (literally, ‘without disturbance’)—a carefully calibrated state of tranquillity that is not happiness, or joy, or any of the ecstatic states found in religious or mystical experiences, or in the more modern highs of falling in love or taking cocaine. Instead, ataraxia is a state of contentment or peace where the world can be falling in around your ears, but your equilibrium is undisturbed.

The Epicurean ideal was a life of ataraxia – tranquillity. For that to be achieved, a person needed to be free from pain. And for Epicurus, freedom from pain was the same thing as pleasure.

Defining philosophy as “an activity, attempting by means of discussion and reasoning, to make life happy,” he believed that happiness is gained through the achievement of moral self-sufficiency (autarkeia) and freedom from disturbance (ataraxia). The main obstacles to the goal of tranquillity of mind are our unnecessary fears and desires, and the only way to eliminate these is to study natural science. The most serious disturbances of all are fear of death, including fear of punishment after death, and fear of the gods. Scientific inquiry removes fear of death by showing that the mind and spirit are material and mortal, so that they cannot live on after we die: as Epicurus neatly and logically puts it: “Death…is nothing to us: when we exist, death is not present; and when death is present, we do not exist. Consequently it does not concern either the living or the dead, since for the living it is non-existent and the dead no longer exist” (Letter to Menoeceus 125). As for fear of the gods, that disappears when scientific investigation proves that the world was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, that the gods live outside the world and have no inclination or power to intervene in its affairs, and that irregular phenomena such as lightning, thunder, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes have natural causes and are not manifestations of divine anger. Every Epicurean would have agreed with Katisha in the Mikado when she sings: But to him who’s scientific There’s nothing that’s terrific In the falling of a flight of thunderbolts! So the study of natural science is the necessary means whereby the ethical end is attained. And that is its only justification: Epicurus is not interested in scientific knowledge for its own sake, as is clear from his statement that “if we were not disturbed by our suspicions concerning celestial phenomena, and by our fear that death concerns us, and also by our failure to understand the limits of pains and desires, we should have no need of natural science” (Principal Doctrines 11). Lucretius’ attitude is precisely the same as his master’s: all the scientific information in his poem is presented with the aim of removing the disturbances, especially fear of death and fear of the gods, that prevent the attainment of tranquillity of mind. It is very important for the reader of On the Nature of Things to bear this in mind all the time, particularly since the content of the work is predominantly scientific and no systematic exposition of Epicurean ethics is provided.25 Epicurus despised philosophers who do not make it their business to improve people’s moral condition: “Vain is the word of a philosopher by whom no human suffering is cured. For just as medicine is of no use if it fails to banish the diseases of the body, so philosophy is of no use if it fails to banish the suffering of the mind” (Usener fr. 221). It is evident that he would have condemned the majority of modern philosophers and scientists.

The goal of pyrrhonist skepticism according to Sextus Empiricus is ataraxia (peace of mind) through epoche, the suspension of dogmatic judgments. Dogmatic judgments concern things non-evident, most important any alleged truth about things beyond or behind their appearance.

Don’t complicate your life with such trivial goals as riches and fame: they are the enemy of ataraxia. Fame, for example, consists of the opinions of others and requires that we must live our life as others wish. To achieve and maintain fame, we must like what others like and shun whatever it is that they shun. Hence, a life of fame or a life in politics? Flee from it. And wealth? Avoid it! It is a trap. The more we acquire the more we crave, and the deeper our sadness when our yearning is not satisfied. Lads, listen to me: if you crave happiness, do not waste your life struggling for that which you really do not need.

It's a good idea, from time to time, to do something outrageous, just to prove that you are free.

No life is easy until one makes easiness a way of life.

We are successful if, having been in the world, we have created more than we have destroyed.

One must, from an early age, be stronger than one's parents, or be destroyed by them.

False success makes people arrogant; true success makes them mild.

The best way to get money is to do something bigger than money. That way you don't sacrifice your life for it.

That’s how you got to this world,” Nesta went on, backing up a step—no doubt to provide space to draw Ataraxia. “Why you, and no one else, can come. Why you said no one would be able to follow you here. Because only you have the Horn. Only you can move between worlds.” “You got me,” Bryce said, throwing up her hands in mock surrender and taking a step out of Nesta’s range. “I’m a big, bad, world-jumping monster. Like my ancestors.” “You’re a liability,” Nesta said flatly, eyes taking on that silvery sheen—that otherworldly fire. “I told you guys a hundred times already: I didn’t even want to come here—” “It doesn’t matter,” Nesta said. “You did come here, to the place where the Daglan are still apparently dead set on returning.

Nesta warned Bryce, her eyes on the shaking earth, “If you open those cells—” “I don’t want to fight you,” Bryce said, voice oddly hollow, like the surge of magic she’d taken from Silene’s store had emptied out her soul. “I’m not your enemy.” “Then let us bring you back to our High Lord,” Nesta snapped. Ataraxia flashed in answer. “To do what? Lock me up? Cut the Horn out of my skin?” “If that’s what’s necessary,” Nesta said coldly, knees bending, readying to strike. “If that’s what it takes to keep our world safe.

He was a devoted follower of the teachings of Epicurus — “that pleasure is the beginning and end of living happily” — although I hasten to add that he was an Epicurean not in the commonly misunderstood sense, as a seeker after luxury, but in the true meaning, as a pursuer of what the Greeks call ataraxia, or freedom from disturbance. He consequently avoided arguments and unpleasantness of any kind (needless to say, he was unmarried) and desired only to contemplate philosophy by day and dine by night with his cultured friends. He

Yo me entrego a vosotros, no de otra manera que un peñasco destituido y solo en baja mar, que le están continuamente combatiendo las olas por todas partes alteradas, y no por eso le mueven de su puesto, ni con sus continuos acometimientos en tantos siglos le deshacen.

Bryce’s star flared … and went out. A chill rippled up her arms, some primal instinct screaming at her to run without knowing why— Light flared at Azriel’s hand—faelight, he’d told her earlier. Two orbs of it drifted ahead, illuminating a short passageway. At its other end lay a vast, circular chamber, its floor carved with symbols and drawings akin to those on the walls of the tunnel. Nesta whispered, voice breathy with fear, “This is the place I last saw the star on your chest.” She drew Ataraxia, and the blade gleamed in the dimness. “We call it the Prison.

A pesar de todo constituía casi un placer sufrir estos tormentos. Había vegetado tanto tiempo, ciego e insensible, y mi corazón había callado tanto tiempo, empobrecido y arrinconado, que esta autoacusación, este horror, todo este sufrimiento espantoso del alma, era un alivio. Eran al menos sufrimientos, sentimientos ardientes en los que latía un corazón.

Every muscle in Bryce’s body went taught, that voice whispering over and over to her, Mortal. You shall die. You shall die. You shall die. She hated how she shook at Nesta’s stalking approach. How both the human and Vanir parts of her trembled at this thing, whatever it was, contained within the mask. Azriel didn’t yield a single step. Nesta came to a stop before him. Nothing human or Fae looked out through the eyeholes of the mask. “Take it off,” he said, voice pure ice. “Let the creature rest again.” A blink, and the undead creature collapsed once more into a pile of bones. “Cassian’s waiting for you, Nesta,” Azriel said—tone gentling. “Take off the Mask.” Nesta stayed silent, Ataraxia ready in her hand. One swipe, and Azriel would be dead. “He’s waiting for you at the House of Wind,” Azriel went on. “At home.” Another blink from Nesta. The silver fire banked a little. Like whoever Cassian was, and whatever the House of Wind was … they might be the only things capable of fighting the siren song of the Mask.

As Schopenhauer writes in the second volume, commenting on the ending of the first: 'it is in keeping with this that, when my teaching reaches its highest point, it assumes a negative character, and so ends with a negation.' But Schopenhauer's point is that this is a relative nothing, not an absolute nothing: it is a nothing that might yet be something, if seen from a different perspective: 'Now it is precisely here that the mystic proceeds positively, and therefore, from this point, nothing is left but mysticism'. Mysticism: the knowledge of the incommunicable: the great foe of Enlightenment philosophers from Bayle to Kant. Surely, if mysticism begins where philosophy ends, Schopenhauer's point must be: so much the worse for mysticism. But while it is true that Schopenhauer sees mysticism and philosophy as incommensurable in principle, nevertheless, as Young points out, Schopenhauer evaluates mysticism positively. Not only do the last words of the first volume leave open a space for mystical knowledge by the relativity of nothingness - but in the second volume, Schopenhauer also points to the wide agreement of mystical experience across different cultures and traditions. Hence, against the common interpretations of Schopenhauer as nihilist or 'absolute pessimist', Young argues that such readings are 'insensitive to the intense theological preoccupation that permeates, particularly, Book IV'. According to Young, Schopenhauer's concept of resignation is not purely negative, but also oriented towards some darkly intuited positive element: an existence of another kind. When Schopenhauer says that the saintly ascetic achieves redemption, he is speaking of an other-wordly state, and that is why he opposes Stoic ataraxia, which, being a this-worldly solution, leads away from salavation, rather than towards it. In Young's view, therefore, not only does Schopenhauer accept a 'field of illuminism' or mysticism - but 'it is upon the veridicality of mystical insight into another, ecstatic world, a world relative to which this one is a mere "dream", that, for Schopenhauer, our only chance of "salvation" depends.

The Middengard Wyrm had arrived at last. Precisely according to Bryce’s plan. She’d been dripping blood for it all this way, leaving a trail, constantly scraping off her scabs to reopen her wounds—ones she’d intentionally inflicted on herself by “falling” into the stream. If the Wyrm relied on scent to hunt, then she’d left a veritable neon sign leading right to them. She hadn’t known when or how it would attack, but she’d been waiting. And she was ready. Bryce fell back as not only shadows, but blue light flared from Azriel—right alongside the ripple of silver flame from Nesta. Back-to-back, they faced the massive creature with razor-sharp focus. Ataraxia gleamed in Nesta’s hand. Truth-Teller pulsed with darkness in Azriel’s. Now or never. Her legs tensed, readying to sprint. Nesta’s eyes slid to Bryce’s for a heartbeat. As if understanding at last: Bryce’s “unhealing” hand. The blood she’d wiped on the walls. Her musing about the linked river system in these caves, sussing out what they knew regarding the terrain and the Wyrm. To unleash this thing—on them. “I’m sorry,” Bryce said to her. And ran.

To this, more orthodox Stoics might object that ‘tranquillity’ (ataraxia) is traditionally seen as a positive side-effect of virtue rather than the goal of life itself. To put it crudely, if tranquillity is really your supreme goal in life then you can just take tranquilizers.

We must not avoid pleasures, but we must select them.” Epicurus, then, is no epicurean; he exalts the joys of intellect rather than those of sense; he warns against pleasures that excite and disturb the soul which they should rather quiet and appease. In the end he proposes to seek not pleasure in its usual sense, but ataraxia—tranquillity, equanimity, repose of mind;

Many were incarcerated with the aberrant prosaic possibilities of ataraxia. Only the mentally sensitive few were cognizant of the nuisance to serenity and an actuality that lacked a balance betwixt havoc and sangfroid. The intellectual capabilities of the excellent idiosyncratic talents of a man with an agog outlook for de minimis fringe entities had left the portal ajar for the enlightened few, to get a glimpse of the obsecure reality that most had decided to claim socratic ignorance to evade inquiries.

El filósofo griego Epicuro preconizaba un placer sencillo como modo de vivir en ataraxia (imperturbabilidad) y en autarkía (independencia), y los citados placeres iban, contrariamente a la idea de constante orgía sexual con la que se relaciona a Epicuro y su “Jardín” (el nombre de su comunidad), desde una frugal comida con amigos, hasta disfrutar de buena música o de un paseo por el prado.

Epicurus defined pleasure differently from the way most of us do. We think of pleasure as a presence, what psychologists call positive affect. Epicurus defined pleasure as a lack, an absence. The Greeks called this state ataraxia, literally “lack of disturbance.” It is the absence of anxiety rather than the presence of anything that leads to contentment. Pleasure is not the opposite of pain but its absence. Epicurus was no hedonist. He was a “tranquillist.

«Avrai sentito dire che a questo mondo o si divora o si è divorati…». «Sì: ci si beffa degli altri, oppure si è beffati». «No; c’è ancora una terza possibilità, ed è quella di divorarti da solo, di beffarti di te stesso. Divorati! Chi divora gode, ma non si stanca mai di ricordare che il godimento prima o poi finisce, e diventa pessimista; chi viene divorato soffre, ma non si stanca mai di sperare che i suoi tormenti finiscano, e diventa ottimista. Divora te stesso, e quando il piacere di divorarti si confonderà e si annullerà con il dolore di essere divorato, raggiungerai l’equilibrio perfetto dello spirito, l’atarassia: allora non sarai che un mero spettacolo di te stesso».

But Nesta raced at Bryce, Ataraxia drawn, silver flame wreathing the blade. Bryce lifted a hand, and spike after spike of rock ruptured from the ground, blocking Nesta’s advance. The chamber shuddered again— “Stop,” Azriel roared, something like panic in his voice. “The cells

She hefted Ataraxia higher. “Go back into your cell and shut the door.” “I shall just escape again.” Lanthys chuckled. “And when I do, I will find you, Nesta Archeron, and you shall be my queen.

Nesta had plunged Ataraxia right through Vesperus’s chest.

This is the place I last saw the star on your chest.” She drew Ataraxia, and the blade gleamed in the dimness. “We call it the Prison.

The wind, like the word, is breath that has been freed from death.

Craft is something that you learn; art, that you unlearn.

Most people are like pre-programmed robots, and unable to go off script for fear of bugging the programme and failing the programmers. All intelligence is art-making, that is, artificial.

Nesta asked, “What is the Wild Hunt?” She’d also told him of their encounter with Lanthys, and the presence of the Autumn Court soldiers. Cassian had convinced Rhys not to engage with them, at least until they could deal with Briallyn. When Rhys had raised his shield around the Prison once more, they’d already vanished. Rhys blew out a breath, leaning back in his chair. “Honestly, I thought it mere myth. That Lanthys remembers such a thing … Well, there’s always room for lying, I suppose, but on the off chance he was telling the truth, that’d make him more than fifteen thousand years old.” Feyre asked, “So what is it, then?” Rhys lifted a hand, and a book of legends from a shelf behind him floated to his fingers. He laid it upon the desk. He flipped it open to a page, revealing an image of a group of tall, strange-looking beings with crowns atop their heads. “The Fae were not the first masters of this world. According to our oldest legends, most now forgotten, we were created by beings who were near-gods—and monsters. The Daglan. They ruled for millennia, and enslaved us and the humans. They were petty and cruel and drank the magic of the land like wine.” Rhys’s eyes flicked to Ataraxia, then to Cassian. “Some strains of the mythology claim that one of the Fae heroes who rose up to overthrow them was Fionn, who was given the great sword Gwydion by the High Priestess Oleanna, who had dipped it into the Cauldron itself. Fionn and Gwydion overthrew the Daglan. A millennium of peace followed, and the lands were divided into rough territories that were the precursors to the courts—but at the end of those thousand years, they were at each other’s throats, on the brink of war.” His face tightened. “Fionn unified them and set himself above them as High King. The first and only High King this land has ever had.

Epicurus (341–270 BCE) led a school of thought named after himself—Epicureanism—that argued that a happy life requires two things: ataraxia (freedom from mental disturbance) and aponia (the absence of physical pain).

Nesta whispered, voice breathy with fear, “This is the place I last saw the star on your chest.” She drew Ataraxia, and the blade gleamed in the dimness. “We call it the Prison.

Busyness is very close to thoughtlessness.

The sword bounced against her thigh, and she said, breaking the silence, “I named it Ataraxia.” He glanced over his shoulder at her. “That sword? What’s it mean?” “It’s from the Old Language. I found it in a book the other day in the library. I liked the sound of it.” “Ataraxia,” he said as though he were trying out the weapon itself. “I like it.” “I’m so glad you approve.” “It’s better than Killer or Silver Majesty,

¡Devórate! El que devora goza, pero no se harta de recordar el acabamiento de sus goces y se hace pesimista; el que es devorado sufre, y no se harta de esperar la liberación de sus penas y se hace optimista. Devórate a ti mismo, y como el placer de devorarte se confundirá y neutralizará con el dolor de ser devorado, llegarás a la perfecta ecuanimidad de espíritu, a la ataraxia; no serás sino un mero espectáculo para ti mismo.

In the face of warfare and inevitable death, there is no wisdom but in ataraxia,—“to look on all things with a mind at peace.

Years ago, when I first started mountaineering, I was impetuous, heady, rash, impatient, prideful and arrogant. I in my mind, was both impervious and impregnable, "nothing could stop me," or so I thought. Then, I came face-to-face with Mount Everest for the first time, and she quickly humbled me. She forced me to do away with the false machismo, the fake toughness and the phony bravado, and in return, she blessed me with the gifts of comity, heightened inner-peace, calmness, and steadiness of both spirit and mind. Those blessings were gifts, gifts that rewrote my limbic system, and altered my pneuma. I now climb with laser clarity and aplomb. Less ardor, more piety born of apathetic ataraxia.

Vico rejects the moral philosophy of both the Stoics and the Epicureans. Vico is against the indifference to society of the Stoic ideal of autarkeia and against the ethic of the cultivation of the pleasurable state of mind of Epicurus’s ideal of ataraxia. Vico’s specific criticisms of each moral position re- duce to the sense in which each of these positions is self-involved. The Stoic withdraws into the self-sufficient individual, and the Epicurean withdraws the individual into the garden. Vico puts this most succinctly in his autobiography: ‘‘For they are each a moral philosophy of solitaries: the Epicurean, of idlers inclosed in their own little gardens; the Stoic, of contemplatives who endeavor to feel no emotion’’ (A 122). Moral philosophy for Vico is part of civil wisdom, which functions in the agora. Moral philosophy has its roots and purpose in the jurisprudential, in the wisdom that governs human affairs, prudentially based in the divine providential order of things. Vico sees the truth in Christian morality as resting on its emphasis on the divinity of the human mind over the claims of the body.

By completely ignoring the emotions, including boredom, the emotions were to be made to cease, hopefully to be replaced by a profound peace of mind, something close to the ataraxia of antiquity

Bahçeye çıkmak tatile gitmek demektir; çiçekler arasında seyahat ederken, vücudun cennete dokunur ve zihnin ruh dinginliğinin sırlarını tadar!

The Epicureans also sought ataraxia. Epicurus (341–270 B.C.) held that the world consisted fundamentally of atoms and “the void,” the space in which the atoms moved. His materialist philosophy sought to free men from their worries about the gods and other superstitions, as well as the fear of death. There was no soul and at death nothing happened except that the atoms of one’s body returned to the flux. Like the Cynics, he advised a retreat from the public world, but a much more decorous one, and taught that one should “cultivate one’s garden.” One should, as he said, “live unknown.” “Epicurean” for us means refined and delicate tastes, but this is in some ways a misnomer. Although advocating a kind of materialist hedonism, Epicurus really argued for the simple life. Pleasure was the only good, and one should arrange one’s life to have as much of it as possible. This did not mean that we should jam as much pleasure into our lives as we can, as if it was an “all you can eat” buffet and we’d be losing out if we didn’t stuff ourselves. Such gluttony is simply quantitative. Epicurus preached discrimination aimed at providing the highest quality of pleasure. Self-discipline and self-control were central tenets of Epicureanism.

Life is a succession of battles in a war that we cannot win.