Queen Christina of Sweden (1626-89) was an incredibly well-educated and brilliant polymath. She ruled from 1632 to 1654, but only took full power after she turned 18 in 1644. Christina was highly pressured to marry and produce an heir, but she hated the loss of her liberty and so abdicated at age 28, and moved to Rome. But she continued to be regarded as a queen of sorts, and had a lot of money and power, including a traveling court of over 200 souls. Both before and after abdication she heavily promoted culture, learning, great artists, and great thinkers. She was an energetic, vigorous free-thinker of considerable abilities and heroism. By all accounts she led a wonderfully rich and full life. She didn’t publish anything in her lifetime, but here are a large minority of her aphorisms which she casually wrote down and shared with friends.
The Work of the
Leisure Of Christina,
Queen of Sweden, 1680
This
work is by one who neither
desires nor fears anything
and who in no way
wishes to
impose on anyone.
*
* *
We should forget the past, endure or enjoy the present, and resign ourselves to the future.
We should enjoy everything without scruple and surrender everything without pain.
We should revenge ourselves in benefits: all other vengeance, no matter how just, is unworthy of an heroic soul.
Modesty is a kind of sincerity.
We should be more miserly with our time than with our money.
Man is not made for pleasure but pleasure for man.
Custom makes us insensible to almost everything.
To praise anyone either more or less than he deserves is to betray truth.
We must always try to do our best; but if we stumble, even if we fall, we must never think that all is lost, but with god's help pick ourselves up again as quickly as possible.
Nature seldom makes a hero and Fortune does not always proclaim those that she makes.
It is the star not the merit that gives the reputation.
To lose occasions of distinguishing oneself is a great loss.
The passions are the salt of life; we are neither happy nor unhappy except in their exercise.
Extraordinary merit is a crime which is never pardoned.
To suffer for well doing is in itself a kind of recompense.
We should read for instruction, correction, consolation.
Reading is part of the duty of an honest man.
Knowledge of the past is of great help for the future.
Those who do not please seldom deceive.
We are always sufficiently clever if we are sufficiently strong, for mere cleverness seldom makes up for lack of strength.
A man of great ability can neither please a fool nor love him.
We should never believe
anything we have not dared to doubt.
Weakness is the greatest of misfortunes and the greatest of defects.
We must pardon everything to men of great spirit and great heart, for to have great spirit and great heart is to have merit.
We ought to be heroically indifferent to all that happens -- but the indifference must be heroic, not stupid.
Happiness does not lie in the
opinion of others.
In the world we must get accustomed to seeing the foolish thought clever, the cowards brave, the wicked good. We are but novices in living if we grow angry over this.
We are almost always
children, but we change our games and our toys.
One should live with men as
with sick people from whom one endures everything.
The
man is truly wise who wishes neither to obey nor to command.
To obey no one is a greater happiness than to command the whole world.
Great friendship is as rare as great love.
We must pardon our enemies, our friends, and ourselves; but it is more difficult to pardon ourselves than others.
Health and money exist to be spent.
We are not made innocent in order that we may remain ignorant.
To believe everything is
weakness; to believe nothing folly.
Perhaps those are right who call youth a fever, but I wish the fever would last all my life, even if it made me dream.
All the life we live between childhood and decrepitude is youth if we are strong. There is no other youth than perfect health and vigor of soul and body. Everyone who has such health is young, no matter if he be a hundred years old; and everyone who has it not is old if his years number but eighteen.
Those who do not love reading deprive themselves of the most useful of pleasures.
We should cultivate our souls rather than torment our bodies.
Conscience gives no quarter.
It requires more courage to marry than to go to war.
To
conquer oneself is to triumph over one's most powerful enemy.
There are things which we should neither do nor say; there are others we should do and not say; others again we should say and not do; yet others that we should do and say without hesitation.
We are always apprentices in the craft of living.
We
should always try to surpass ourselves. This occupation will last our
lives out.
We ought never to be satisfied with ourselves, however satisfied others may seem with us.
Enemies
are always sincere in their hate, though friends are not in their
love.
Patience is the virtue of those who lack either courage or force.
There is no condition which may not be glorified by our actions or our sufferings.
If we were not ignorant we should neither grow old nor sick. Both ills have their remedies of which we are ignorant.
If we took as much trouble to be good as we do to appear good we should end by being so.
...self-love is not criminal as some have said.
Old age is more terrible than death...
Happy are those who die without growing old.
Men talk more than beasts, but it is questionable whether they are more wise.
The famous counsel “Know thyself”, which men have said is the source of human wisdom, is but the source of misery, for this decree imposes on man the harsh necessity of tearing down his self-disguises and of realizing his own nothingness.
The world should be looked upon as an inn, in which we abide but a few hours.
The
patience of Epictetus and the brutality of his master are equally
insupportable.
We ought both to be sensible of and to
despise everything that happens.
The world is a great and magnificent temple, of which the earth we tread is the altar whereon day and night continually Time and Death immolate victims to the Author of Nature.
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