To bear with patience wrongs done to oneself is a mark of perfection, but to bear with patience wrongs done to someone else is a mark of imperfection and even of actual sin.
Thomas AquinasRead
Pray thee, spare, thyself at times: for it becomes a wise man sometimes to relax the high pressure of his attention to work.
Interpretation
It is important for wise individuals to take breaks from intense focus on work.
In this quote, Thomas Aquinas emphasizes the necessity for individuals, especially those engaged in serious and demanding work, to pause and give themselves a moment of rest. Constant pressure and rigorous attention can lead to burnout, and taking time to relax is essential for maintaining mental clarity and overall well-being. Recognizing that even the most diligent of workers need to step back occasionally is a mark of wisdom.
In practice
In a workshop on productivity, you might say, 'As Thomas Aquinas advises, we must spare ourselves time to avoid burnout.'
To bear with patience wrongs done to oneself is a mark of perfection, but to bear with patience wrongs done to someone else is a mark of imperfection and even of actual sin.
Law is nothing other than a certain ordinance of reason for the common good, promulgated by the person who has the care of the community.
Now this relaxation of the mind from work consists on playful words or deeds. Therefore it becomes a wise and virtuous man to have recourse to such things at times.
A song is the exultation of the mind dwelling on eternal things, bursting forth in the voice.
We are like children, who stand in need of masters to enlighten us and direct us; God has provided for this, by appointing his angels to be our teachers and guides.
To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.
Whenever there is a simple error that most laymen fall for, there is always a slightly more sophisticated version of the same problem that experts fall for.
Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two. A constant coming and going: wisdom lies in the momentary.
Transient are conditioned things. Try to accomplish your aim with diligence.
If any successes has come to me, it came because I insisted on thinking things through. That's all I was capable of doing in life, was thinking pretty hard about trying to get the right answer, and then acting on it. I never learned to do anything else.
Only when we accept and forgive all that is or has been the good, the bad, and the ugly of our human lives can we get off the guilt trip and back into the flow. That means we must love our humanness and all of our failings; we must accept, learn from, and yes, even love our mistakes.
These dreams reminded me that, since I wished some day to become a writer, it was high time to decide what sort of books I was going to write. But as soon as I asked myself the question, and tried to discover some subject to which I could impart a philosophical significance of infinite value, my mind would stop like a clock, my consciousness would be faced with a blank, I would feel either that I was wholly devoid of talent or perhaps that some malady of the brain was hindering its development.
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