Nothing is harder to direct than a man in prosperity; nothing more easily managed that one is adversity.
Interpretation
Prosperity can make a person difficult to guide, whereas adversity provides a clearer path to management and direction.
This quote by Plutarch highlights the contrasting nature of human behavior in prosperity versus adversity. When individuals are prosperous, they may become complacent or arrogant, making it challenging to provide them with direction or guidance. Conversely, during times of hardship, people may be more receptive to advice and guidance, as they seek ways to overcome their challenges. Thus, the quote suggests that adversity can foster personal growth and adaptability, while prosperity may lead to a lack of humility and openness to change.
In practice
This quote could be used in a motivational speech about personal development during tough times.
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
Be a terror to the butchers, that they may be fair in their weight; and keep hucksters and fraudulent dealers in awe, for the same reason.
Genocide has two phases: one, destruction of the national pattern of the oppressed group; the other, the imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor. This imposition, in turn, may be made upon the oppressed population which is allowed to remain or upon the territory alone, after removal of the population and the colonization by the oppressor's own nationals.
The real question today is not when human life begins, but, what is the value of human life? The abortionist who reassembles the arms and legs of a tiny baby to make sure all its parts have been torn from its mother's body can hardly doubt whether it is a human being. The real question for him and for all of us is whether that tiny human life has a God-given right to be protected by the law - the same right we have.
It was obvious that bigotry was never a one-way operation, that hatred bred hatred!
The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.
The snow drifted down and down, all in ghostly silence, and lay thick and unbroken on the ground. It was a place of whites and blacks and greys. White towers and white snow and white statues, black shadows and black trees, the dark grey sky above. A pure world, Sansa thought. I do not belong here. Yet she stepped out all the same.
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