Good character is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little by little, day by day. Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop good character.
HeraclitusRead
There is nothing permanent except change.
Interpretation
Change is the only constant in life.
This quote by Heraclitus emphasizes that change is an inevitable aspect of existence. It suggests that nothing in life is fixed or stable, and we must embrace the reality of continual transformation in our personal and collective experiences.
In practice
In a motivational talk about personal growth, one might use this quote to encourage embracing change.
Good character is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little by little, day by day. Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop good character.
Thinking is a sacred disease and sight is deceptive.
Things of which there is sight, hearing, apprehension, these I prefer.
Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.
For when is death not within our selves? And as Heracleitus says: “Living and dead are the same, and so are awake and asleep, young and old. The former when shifted are the latter, and again the latter when shifted are the former."
Whosoever wishes to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details. Knowledge is not intelligence. In searching for the truth be ready for the unexpected. Change alone is unchanging. The same road goes both up and down. The beginning of a circle is also its end. Not I, but the world says it: all is one. And yet everything comes in season.
What I thought was an end turned out to be a middle. What I thought was a brick wall turned out to be a tunnel. What I thought was an injustice turned out to be a color of the sky.
In that part of the book of my memory before which little can be read, there is a heading, which says: ‘Incipit vita nova: Here begins the new life’.
When you tire of living, change itself seems evil, does it not? for then any change at all disturbs the deathlike peace of the life-weary.
It is easier to change a man's religion than to change his diet.
The path to relative economic, social and ecological sustainability is guaranteed to be littered with failures of every nature and scale. If we recognize them and learn from them, the transition will proceed faster and in more resource-efficient ways. If, on the other hand, we prefer the short-term comfort of burying our failures, or of blaming scapegoats, the transition will be significantly slowed, or could even be derailed completely.
I think that all human systems require continuous renewal. They rigidify. They get stuff in the joints. They forget what they cared about. The forces against it are nostalgia and the enormous appeal of having things the way they always have been, appeals to a supposedly happy past. But we've got to move on.
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