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
Presumption must be quenched even more than a fire.
Interpretation
Presumption leads to misunderstandings and conflicts, which should be avoided.
Heraclitus emphasizes the destructive nature of presumption, suggesting that it can cause greater harm than fire. This quote implies that assumptions based on incomplete understanding can lead to false judgments and harmful consequences, and therefore should be diligently avoided.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion on the importance of effective communication in relationships.
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: βLiving 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.
Only a stomach that rarely feels hungry scorns common things.
For what can be more noble than to slay oneself? Not literally. Not with a blade in the guts. But to extinguish the selfish self within, that part which looks only to its own preservation, to save its own skin. That, I saw, was the victory you Spartans had gained over yourselves. That was the glue. It was what you had learned and it made me stay, to learn it too.
I listened very, very carefully to the world around me to pick up the signals of when trouble was coming. Not that I could stop it. But it made me observant. That was helpful when I became a lawyer, because I knew how to read people's signals.
Honesty with ourselves & others gets us sober, but it is tolerance that keeps us that way.
Your life is a mirror. Life gives us not what we want. Life gives us who we are
Sit in a room and read--and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time.
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