Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.
Alexander PopeRead
The season when to come, and when to go, to sing, or cease to sing, we never know.
Interpretation
We often lack knowledge about the right timing for our actions in life.
This quote reflects on the uncertainty of life and the unpredictability of timing in our actions, such as when to engage or withdraw, express joy or silence our feelings. It suggests that despite our efforts to foresee the best moments to act, we cannot always know the right time to pursue our passions or remain still.
In practice
Use this quote in a speech about the unpredictability of life and making choices.
Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.
What dire offence from am'rous causes springs, What mighty contests rise from trivial things.
Fair tresses man's imperial race ensnare; And beauty draws us with a single hair.
An honest man's the noblest work of God.
One thought of thee puts all the pomp to flight;_x000D_ _x000D_ Priests, tapers, temples, swim before my sight.
Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?
If you look at the developments in the international scene over the past many years, we haven't been able to resolve many problems and many crises, because we have approached them from a zero-sum perspective. My gain has always been defined as somebody else's loss, and through that, we never resolve problems.
This is what happened when one left one's home - pieces of oneself scattered all over the world, no one place ever completely satisfied, always a nostalgia for the place left behind.
MYTHOLOGY, n. The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later.
Even as one and the same person is called by different names according to the different functions he performs, so also one and the same mind is called by the different names: mind, intellect, memory, and egoity, on account of the difference in the modes - and not because of any real difference.
The human heart has a tiresome tendency to label as fate only what crushes it. But happiness likewise, in its way, is without reason, since it is inevitable.
There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning.
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