It is easy at any moment to surrender a large fortune; to build one up is a difficult and an arduous task.
LivyRead
In difficult and desperate cases, the boldest counsels are the safest.
Interpretation
In tough situations, taking bold actions can often lead to the best outcomes.
This quote by Livy suggests that when faced with challenging or desperate circumstances, it is the courageous and bold decisions that typically yield the safest and most effective results. Instead of hesitating or opting for complacent solutions, being bold can lead to innovation and successful resolutions, particularly when the stakes are high.
In practice
This quote can be used in a motivational speech to encourage teams facing difficulties.
It is easy at any moment to surrender a large fortune; to build one up is a difficult and an arduous task.
Valor is the soldier's adornment.
The army from Asia introduced a foreign luxury to Rome; it was then the meals began to require more dishes and more expenditure . . . the cook, who had up to that time been employed as a slave of low price, become dear: what had been nothing but a metier was elevated to an art.
The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind; for in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see; and in that record you can find yourself and your country both examples and warnings; fine things to take as models, base things rotten through and through, to avoid.
Under the influence of fear, which always leads men to take a pessimistic view of things, they magnified their enemies' resources, and minimized their own.
The troubles which have come upon us always seem more serious than those which are only threatening.
I was a milksop as a kid. I had no confidence, no guts. I felt I was going to be someone else someday - someone who didn't have my weaknesses.
Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.
I'm so proud that now you can exist as a gay man and be an Olympian, and it can be beneficial rather than negative. So it's amazing. And I just think I feel so liberated now that I've been out of the closet for a while, and so I'm free in that I just get to be myself, speak freely, act freely, and I think that I am competing confidently.
Victory in defeat, there is none higher. She didn't give up, Ben; she's still trying to lift that stone after it has crushed her. She's a father working while cancer eats away his insides, to bring home one more pay check. She's a twelve-year-old trying to mother her brothers and sisters because mama had to go to Heaven. She's a switchboard operator sticking to her post while smoke chokes her and fire cuts off her escape. She's all the unsung heroes who couldn't make it but never quit.
Sometimes it takes more courage to get up and run than to stay. You either just do it or you don't. I got so scared the first day in combat I just decided to go along with it.
Almost everything worthwhile carries with it some sort of risk, whether it's starting a new business, whether it's leaving home, whether it's getting married, or whether it's flying in space.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.