Life is not merely to be alive, but to be well.
MartialRead
Conceal a flaw, and the world will imagine the worst.
Interpretation
Hiding imperfections can lead to greater misunderstandings and negative assumptions from others.
The quote by Martial emphasizes that when individuals try to hide their flaws or imperfections, it often leads others to speculate or imagine far worse interpretations. This suggests that honesty and openness about our deficiencies might foster acceptance and understanding rather than judgment and negativity.
In practice
During a team meeting, someone might use this quote to encourage colleagues to be open about challenges they face rather than hiding them.
Life is not merely to be alive, but to be well.
To the ashes of the dead glory comes too late.
Life's not just about being alive, but being well.
My poems are naughty, but my life is pure.
Neither fear your death's day nor long for it.
Service cannot be expected from a friend in service; let him be a freeman who wishes to be my master.
Man must be arched and buttressed from within, else the temple wavers to the dust.
And truly it little matters what I say, this or that or any other thing. Saying is inventing. Wrong, very rightly wrong. You invent nothing, you think you are inventing, you think you are escaping, and all you do is stammer out your lesson, the remnants of a pensum one day got by heart and long forgotten, life without tears, as it is wept.
What a sad story, I thought for so long. Not that I now think it was happy. But I think it is true, and thus the question of whether it is sad or happy has no meaning whatever.
What is the good life? What is the good man? The good woman? What is the good society and what is my relation to it? What are my obligations to society? What is best for my children? What is justice? Truth? Virtue? What is my relation to nature, to death, to aging, to pain, to illness? How can I live a zestful, enjoyable, meaningful life? What is my responsibility to my brothers? Who are my brothers? What shall I be loyal to? What must I be ready to die for?
Everyone - pantheist, atheist, skeptic, polytheist - has to answer these questions: 'Where did I come from? What is life's meaning? How do I define right from wrong and what happens to me when I die?' Those are the fulcrum points of our existence.
Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
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