Good character is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little by little, day by day. Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop good character.
HeraclitusRead
Under the comb, the tangle and the straight path are the same.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that both complexity and simplicity lead to the same destination in life.
Heraclitus emphasizes that the journey of life, with its twists and turns, follows a common principle, regardless of the apparent complexity or simplicity we perceive. The 'comb' symbolizes the tool that straightens out the tangle, yet both forms exist within the same framework, indicating that all paths we take are interconnected and ultimately lead to similar truths or outcomes.
In practice
In a motivational speech to a group of students about embracing life's challenges.
Good character is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little by little, day by day. Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop good character.
Thinking is a sacred disease and sight is deceptive.
Things of which there is sight, hearing, apprehension, these I prefer.
Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.
For when is death not within our selves? And as Heracleitus says: βLiving and dead are the same, and so are awake and asleep, young and old. The former when shifted are the latter, and again the latter when shifted are the former."
Whosoever wishes to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details. Knowledge is not intelligence. In searching for the truth be ready for the unexpected. Change alone is unchanging. The same road goes both up and down. The beginning of a circle is also its end. Not I, but the world says it: all is one. And yet everything comes in season.
It is within our power not to make a judgement about something, and so not disturb our minds; for nothing in itself possesses the power to form our judgements.
Human nature, essentially changeable, as unstable as the dust, can endure no restraint; if it binds itself it soon begins to tear madly at its bonds, until it rends everything asunder, the wall, the bonds, and its very self.
The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.
We are product of neither nature nor nurture; we are a product of choice, because there is always a space between stimulus and response. As we wisely exercise our power to choose based on principles, the space will become larger.
In the women's world, as well as in the men's world, there exists the class law and the class struggle, and it appears as fully established that sometimes between the socialist working women and those belonging to the middle class, there may be antagonisms.
With all of the history of war, and the human race's history unfortunately has been a good deal more war than peace, with nuclear weapons distributed all through the world, and available, and the strong reluctance of any people to accept defeat, I see the possibility in the 1970's of the President of the United States having to face a world in which 15 or 20 or 25 nations may have these weapons.
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