There is nothing so fleeting as the memory of benefits received.
Francesco GuicciardiniRead
Conspiracies, since they cannot be engaged in without the fellowship of others, are for that reason most perilous; for as most men are either fools or knaves, we run excessive risk in making such folk our companions.
Interpretation
Conspiracies require collaboration, which can be dangerous due to the unreliable nature of people involved.
This quote by Francesco Guicciardini emphasizes the inherent risks associated with conspiracies, highlighting that engaging in such activities necessitates the involvement of others. Since people can often be foolish or deceitful, trusting them as partners in conspiracies poses a significant danger to one's integrity and safety.
In practice
During a discussion about the importance of choosing friends wisely, one might cite this quote to illustrate the dangers of conspiratorial thinking.
There is nothing so fleeting as the memory of benefits received.
If you attempt certain things at the right time, they are easy to accomplish - in fact, they almost get done by themselves. If you undertake them before the time is right, not only will they fail, but they will often become impossible to accomplish even when the time would have been right.
He who imitates what is evil always goes beyond the example that is set; on the contrary, he who imitates what is good always falls short.
Let no one trust so entirely to natural prudence as to persuade himself that it will suffice to guide him without help from experience.
Few revolutions succeed, and when they do, you often discover they did not gain what you hoped for, and you condemn yourself to perpetual fear, as the parties you defeated may always regain power and work for your ruin.
One who imitates what is bad always goes beyond his model; while one who imitates what is good always comes up short of it.
Free societies...are societies in motion, and with motion comes tension, dissent, friction. Free people strike sparks, and those sparks are the best evidence of freedom's existence.
Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.
What greater reassurance can the weak have than that they are like anyone else?
"Uncertainty" is NOT "I don't know." It is "I can't know." "I am uncertain" does not mean "I could be certain."
I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.
But Mole stood still a moment, held in thought. As one wakened suddenly from a beautiful dream, who struggles to recall it, but can recapture nothing but a dim sense of the beauty in it, the beauty! Till that, too, fades away in its turn, and the dreamer bitterly accepts the hard, cold waking and all its penalties.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.