Learn to be pleased with everything, with wealth so far as it makes us beneficial to others; with poverty, for not having much to care for; and with obscurity, for being unenvied.
Interpretation
Embrace gratitude and contentment, regardless of your circumstances, recognizing their potential benefits.
This quote by Plutarch emphasizes the importance of acceptance and gratitude in life. It suggests that we should learn to be content with our situation, whether we possess wealth or are in poverty, and appreciate the benefits that each state can offer. Wealth can enable us to help others, poverty can free us from the burdens of excessive care, and obscurity can protect us from envy. This mindset encourages a focus on the positives in any circumstance and promotes a life of humility and service.
In practice
In a motivational speech about embracing life's challenges.
Sometimes small incidents, rather than glorious exploits, give us the best evidence of character. So, as portrait painters are more exact in doing the face, where the character is revealed, than the rest of the body, I must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the marks of the souls of men.
It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such a one as is unworthy of him; for the one is only belief - the other contempt.
Come back with your shield - or on it
The richest soil, if uncultivated, produces the rankest weeds.
For the correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.
Our senses through ignorance of Reality, falsely tell us that what appears to be, is. FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real
Writing is a fine therapy for people who are perpetually scared of nameless threats... for jittery people.
He who went to the kings to seek favors went away from Allah.
If you put your hand into a fire, does anyone have to tell you to move it? Do you have to decide? No: When your hand starts to burn, it moves. You don’t have to direct it; the hand moves itself. In the same way, once you understand, through inquiry, that an untrue thought causes suffering, you move away from it.
Humility, that low, sweet root, from which all heavenly virtues shoot.
I can focus on writing, or I can get lost in wonderfully fun but endless conversations and produce nothing new at all. I count on those people who enjoy my work to understand this.
To think is easy. To act is difficult. To act as one thinks is the most difficult.
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