The writing of the wise are the only riches our posterity cannot squander.
Walter Savage LandorRead
We often fancy that we suffer from ingratitude, while in reality we suffer from self-love.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that feelings of ingratitude may stem from a focus on self-love rather than genuine neglect from others.
Walter Savage Landor reflects on the nature of our emotional suffering, indicating that what we often perceive as ingratitude directed towards us is, in fact, a consequence of our own self-centeredness. This self-love can distort our perceptions, causing us to overlook the appreciation we receive from others and to focus instead on our unmet desires or expectations.
In practice
In a motivational speech about self-awareness and emotional health.
The writing of the wise are the only riches our posterity cannot squander.
Those who are quite satisfied sit still and do nothing; those who are not quite satisfied are the sole benefactors of the world.
Death stands above me, whispering low I know not what into my ear; Of his strange language all I know Is, there is not a word of fear.
We listen to those whom we know to be of the same opinion as ourselves, and we call them wise for being of it; but we avoid such as differ from us.
Life and death appear more certainly ours than whatsoever else; and yet hardly can that be called ours, which comes without our knowledge, and goes without it.
I strove with none, for none was worth my strife. Nature I loved and, next to Nature, Art: I warm'd both hands before the fire of life; It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
Racism in Brazil is well hidden, subtle, and unspoken, underestimated by the media. It is nevertheless extremely violent.
Most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally evil, but by people being fundamentally people.
Far away, I could hear them lapping up my brains. Like Macbeth's witches, the three lithe cats surrounded my broken head, slurping up that thick soup inside. The tips of their rough tongues licked the soft folds of my mind. And with each lick my consciousness flickered like a flame and faded away.
He has come to the most dreadful conclusion a literary man can come to, the conclusion that the ordinary view is the right one. It is only the last and wildest kind of courage that can stand on a tower before ten thousand people and tell them that twice two is four.
The world always had the same bankrupt look, to foregoing ages as to us.
I have my own soul. My own spark of divine fire.
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