I had much rather be adorned by beauty of character than by jewels. Jewels are the gift of fortune, character comes from within.
PlautusRead
The gods confound the man who first found out How to distinguish hours! Confound him, too, Who in this place set up a sun-dial, To cut and hack my days so wretchedly Into small portions.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote criticizes the measurement of time, suggesting that it fragments our lives into misery.
In this quote, Plautus expresses a deep frustration with the concept of measuring time through devices such as sundials. He advocates that the invention of such tools has led to a disruption of the natural flow of life, confining our experiences into rigid segments and causing unnecessary anxiety and misery.
Themes
TimeMeasurementSundialFrustrationLife
In practice
Example use cases
During a philosophical discussion about the impact of time on human life.
More from Plautus
All quotes →Property is unstable, and youth perishes in a moment. Life itself is held in the grinning fangs of Death, Yet men delay to obtain release from the world. Alas, the conduct of mankind is surprising.
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Things we do not expect, happen more frequently than we wish.
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I would rather be adorned by beauty of character than jewels. Jewels are the gift of fortune, while character comes from within.
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If I can only keep my good name, I shall have riches enough.
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Spice a dish with love and it pleases every palate.
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Similar quotes
Language is not made to be believed but to be obeyed, and to compel obedience newspapers, news, proceed by redundancy, in that they tell us what we ‘must’ think, retain, expect, etc. language is neither informational nor communicational. It is not the communication of information but something quite different: the transmission of order-words, either from one statement to another or within each statement, insofar as each statement accomplishes an act and the act is accomplished in the statement
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Water reflects everything it encounters. This is so commonplace that we think water is blue, when in fact it has no color.... But the water, the glorious water everywhere, has taught me that we are more than what we reflect or love. This is the work of compassion: to embrace everything clearly without imposing who we are and without losing who we are.
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To be a man, to have been born without knowing it or wanting it, to be thrown into the ocean of existence, to be obliged to swim, to exist; to have an identity; to resist the pressure and shocks from the outside and the unforeseen and unforeseeable acts - one's own and those of others - which so often exceed one's capacities? And what is more, to endure one's own thoughts about all this: in a word, to be human.
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Spirituality is meant to take us beyond our tribal identity into a domain of awareness that is more universal.
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Man is able to do what he is unable to imagine. His head trails a wake through the galaxy of the absurd.
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There are two infinities that confuse me: the one in my soul devours me; the one around me will crush me
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