Only a stomach that rarely feels hungry scorns common things.
HoraceRead
Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant.
Interpretation
Adversity can reveal hidden strengths and abilities that remain unused during easier times.
This quote by Horace suggests that challenging situations can bring out skills and talents in individuals that might otherwise go unnoticed. In times of prosperity, people often rely on comfort and security, which may prevent them from recognizing their true potential. However, when faced with difficulties, one is compelled to adapt and demonstrate resilience, often discovering abilities they were previously unaware of.
In practice
During a motivational speech to college students about embracing challenges.
Only a stomach that rarely feels hungry scorns common things.
Now is the time for drinking; now the time to beat the earth with unfettered foot.
Carpe diem! Rejoice while you are alive; enjoy the day; live life to the fullest; make the most of what you have. It is later than you think.
It is of no consequence of what parents a man is born, as long as he be a man of merit.
It is not the rich man you should properly call happy, _x000D_ but him who knows how to use with wisdom the blessings of the gods, _x000D_ to endure hard poverty, and who fears dishonor worse than death, _x000D_ and is not afraid to die for cherished friends or fatherland.
Few cross the river of time and are able to reach non-being. Most of them run up and down only on this side of the river. But those who when they know the law follow the path of the law, they shall reach the other shore and go beyond the realm of death.
Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth.
It is an unscrupulous intellect that does not pay to antiquity its due reverence.
He (the Sage) does not show off, therefore he shines.
Every search begins with beginner’s luck. And every search ends with the victor’s being severely tested.
We're all just a bundle of habits shaped by our memories. And to the extent that we control our lives, we do so by gradually altering those habits, which is to say the networks of our memory. No lasting joke, or invention, or insight, or work of art was ever produced by an external memory. Not yet, at least.
The principal mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers.
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