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 had used eclectic therapy and behavior therapy on myself at the age of 19 to get over my fear of public speaking and of approaching young women in public.
When one has nothing to lose, one becomes courageous. We are timid only when there is something we can still cling to.
That is not to say that we can relax our readiness to defend ourselves. Our armament must be adequate to the needs, but our faith is not primarily in these machines of defense but in ourselves.
What I find powerful is a person with the confidence to be her own self.
Sometimes people ask me how difficult the astronaut program was, but being in Sierra Leone, being responsible for the health of more than 200 people, seven days a week, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, at age 26 - that prepared me to take on a lot of different challenges.
Fearlessness may be a gift, but perhaps most precious is courage from cultivating the habit of refusing to let fear dictate one's actions.
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