Help others solve their problems; standing farther away, you can often see matters more clearly than they do. . . The greatest service you can render someone else is helping him or her help themselves.
Baltasar GracianRead
Advice is sometimes transmitted more successfully through a joke than grave teaching.
Interpretation
Humor can be a more effective tool for imparting advice than serious instruction.
This quote suggests that humor can serve as a powerful medium for delivering wisdom and advice. Often, people might be more receptive to and remember messages conveyed through jokes and light-heartedness than those presented in a stern or serious manner, making humor a valuable tactic in teaching and sharing insights.
In practice
During a workshop on leadership, I shared a light-hearted anecdote that illustrated the importance of adaptability.
Help others solve their problems; standing farther away, you can often see matters more clearly than they do. . . The greatest service you can render someone else is helping him or her help themselves.
It is a novel kind of supremacy, the best that life can offer, to have as servants by skill those who by nature are our masters.
It is better to sleep on things beforehand than lie awake about them afterwards.
Two kinds of people are good at foreseeing danger: those who have learned at their own expense, and the clever people who learn a great deal at the expense of others.
The envious die not once, but as oft as the envied win applause.
Never participate in the secrets of those above you; you think you share the fruit, and you share the stones - the confidence of a prince is not a grant, but a tax
Odd words floated back to them over the hundreds of heads. "Nobility of spirit"..."intellectual contribution"..."greatness of heart"...It did not mean very much. It had little to do with Dumbledore as Harry had known him. He suddenly remembered Dumbledore's idea of a few words, "nitwit," "oddment," "blubber," and "tweak," and again had to suppress a grin.
This wealth of experiences, personal and professional, have helped me appreciate the variety of perspectives that present themselves in every case that I hear.
The best of modern therapy is much like a process of shared meditation, where therapist and client sit together, learning to pay close attention to those aspects and dimensions of the self that the client may be unable to touch on his or her own.
Knock and it shall be opened.' But does knocking mean hammering and kicking the door like a maniac?
The more I prayed for my enemies, the softer my heart became.
Whenever you are angry, be assured that it is not only a present evil, but that you have increased a habit.
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