We should every night call ourselves to an account: What infirmity have I mastered today? What passions opposed! What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired?
Seneca The ElderRead
The courts of kings are full of people, but empty of friends.
Interpretation
True friendship is rare in positions of power and authority.
Seneca the Elder highlights the emptiness of royal courts, suggesting that while they may be crowded with people seeking favor, genuine friendships are scarce. This reflects a philosophical viewpoint on the nature of relationships in environments where power dynamics overshadow authentic connections.
In practice
In a speech about networking in business, I may say, 'Remember, the courts of kings are full of people, but empty of friends.'
We should every night call ourselves to an account: What infirmity have I mastered today? What passions opposed! What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired?
We can be thankful to a friend for a few acres or a little money; and yet for the freedom and command of the whole earth, and for the great benefits of our being, our life, health, and reason, we look upon ourselves as under no obligation.
True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing.
The sun also shines on the wicked.
Let us be brave in the face of adversity.
What you think about yourself is much more important than what others think of you.
We have before us the fiendishness of business competition and the world war, passion and wrongdoing, antagonism between classes and moral depravity within them, economic tyranny above and the slave spirit below.
There are quite a lot of YouTube clips of me that have gone viral. One that I think of is of a young woman at a lecture I was giving - she came from Liberty University, which is a ludicrous religious institution. She said, 'What if you are wrong?' and I answered that rather briefly, and that's gone viral.
There are three species of government: republican, monarchical, and despotic.
Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered the less it mattered. It was never important enough. Because Worse Things had happened. In the country that she came from poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace Worse Things kept happening
Life in freedom is not easy, and democracy is not perfect.
What do sad complaints avail if the offense is not cut down by punishment.
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