Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.
Seneca The YoungerRead
Nothing becomes so offensive so quickly as grief. When fresh it finds someone to console it, but when it becomes chronic, it is ridiculed and rightly.
Interpretation
Chronic grief is often met with ridicule, as it outlasts the initial compassion of others.
This quote by Seneca reflects on the nature of grief and how societal perceptions change over time. Initially, grief evokes empathy and support, but once it becomes prolonged and chronic, it may lead to judgment and ridicule from others who expect one to move on. Seneca highlights the complexities of human emotions and the expectations of society regarding the expression of pain.
In practice
During a speech on mental health awareness, you might quote Seneca to emphasize the importance of acknowledging prolonged grief.
Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.
No tree becomes rooted and sturdy unless many a wind assails it. For by its very tossing it tightens its grip and plants its roots more securely; the fragile trees are those that have grown in a sunny valley.
Slavery takes hold of few, but many take hold of slavery.
To be able to endure odium is the first art to be learned by those who aspire to power.
Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness.
Loyalty is the holiest good in the human heart.
To some degree, we're all thinking about the same things. It's the zeitgeist. The trick, in a way, as a writer, is to hope that your interests in some sense link up with the culture around you.
Dangerous acts can be done safely in a community which thinks and feels rightly, which would be the way to hell if they were executed by those who think and feel wrongly.
We must admit with humility that, while number is purely a product of our minds, space has a reality outside our minds, so that we cannot completely prescribe its properties a priori.
To measure the man, measure his heart.
One has freedom as the principal means of action; the other has servitude. Their . . . paths [are] diverse; nevertheless, each seems called by some secret design of Providence one day to hold in its hands the destinies of half the world.
Facts as facts do not always create a spirit of reality, because reality is a spirit.
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