Authority and place demonstrate and try the tempers of men, by moving every passion and discovering every frailty.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that authority tests human character by stirring emotions and revealing weaknesses.
Plutarch's quote highlights how positions of power and societal roles expose the true nature of individuals. When authority acts upon people, it can evoke a range of emotions, from pride to fear, ultimately leading to the revelation of their vulnerabilities and flaws. This passage reflects on the idea that the way individuals respond to authority can profoundly indicate their moral and emotional strength.
In practice
In a discussion about leadership qualities in a seminar.
Sometimes small incidents, rather than glorious exploits, give us the best evidence of character. So, as portrait painters are more exact in doing the face, where the character is revealed, than the rest of the body, I must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the marks of the souls of men.
It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such a one as is unworthy of him; for the one is only belief - the other contempt.
Come back with your shield - or on it
The richest soil, if uncultivated, produces the rankest weeds.
For the correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.
Our senses through ignorance of Reality, falsely tell us that what appears to be, is. FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real
I do not know how to make a man think seriously about sin and judgment, and must look to the work of the Holy Spirit for any hint of such a working.
I didn't have to scramble up and down the ladder from despair to euphoria anymore, trying to convince myself that life was either painful and terrible or joyous and wonderful. The simple truth was that life was both. p 214
But women do not say 'We', except at some congress of feminists or similar formal demonstration; men say 'women', and women use the same word in referring to themselves.
For axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses.
Being a Christian is more like having your soul possessed by a spirit than having your mind clothed with new beliefs... It is like being haunted by the Holy Ghost.
It may be that there is no such thing as an equable motion, whereby time may be accurately measured. All motions may be accelerated or retarded, but the true, or equable, progress of absolute time is liable to no change.
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