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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: sufficient thenceforward to rid me of all those repentings and pangs of
remorse that usually disturb the consciences of such feeble and uncertain
minds as, destitute of any clear and determinate principle of choice,
allow themselves one day to adopt a course of action as the best, which
they abandon the next, as the opposite.
My third maxim was to endeavor always to conquer myself rather than
fortune, and change my desires rather than the order of the world, and in
general, accustom myself to the persuasion that, except our own thoughts,
there is nothing absolutely in our power; so that when we have done our
best in things external to us, all wherein we fail of success is to be
held, as regards us, absolutely impossible: and this single principle
Reason Discourse |
