After reading a manual of spiritual exercises and rules in her teens, Mary Ward became so scrupulous she found herself unable to keep up with all the acts of virtue she believed she should perform. But then she discovered she’d been wrestling too hard:
“These things are not of obligation, but of devotion. And God is not pleased with certain acts made thus by constraint. To acquire my own quiet, therefore, I will do these things with love and freedom, or leave them alone.” -Mary Ward
A money-getter may be drawn out of his bed by three or four pence; but this will not suffice for a student. A proud man may say, “What shall I think of myself, if I don’t get up?” but the more humble one will be content to waive his prodigious notion of himself, out of respect to his kindly bed. The mechanical man shall get, up without any ado at all; and so shall the barometer. An ingenious lier in bed will find hard matter of discussion even on the score of health and longevity. He will ask us for our proofs and precedents of the ill effects of lying later in cold weather; and sophisticate much on the advantages of an even temperature of body; of the natural propensity (pretty universal) to have one’s way; and of the animals that roll themselves up, and sleep all the winter. As to longevity, he will ask whether the longest is of necessity the best; and whether Holborn is the handsomest street in London.
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To think is first of all to create a world
or to limit one’s own world
which comes to the same thing.
Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
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