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
Where there is no strife there is decay: 'The mixture which is not shaken decomposes.'
Interpretation
Conflict and challenge are essential for growth and transformation.
This quote by Heraclitus suggests that without conflict or struggle, stagnation occurs. It emphasizes the idea that disturbance or challenges can lead to development and vitality, analogous to how a mixture needs to be stirred to prevent it from settling and decomposing.
In practice
In a motivational speech to a group of aspiring leaders, to emphasize the importance of facing challenges.
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.
In a state therefore of great equality and virtue, where pure and simple manners prevailed, the increase of the human species would evidently be much greater than any increase that has been hitherto known.
A historical perspective can also help free us from the ever-present danger -- especially at danger in the social sciences -- of absolutizing a theory or method which is actually relative to the fact that we live at a given moment in time in the development of our particular culture.
Being solo really lends itself to different interpretations - and everything is in the moment and on a whim. I never realised how far out you can go when you are by yourself.
When you realize the nature of mind, layers of confusion peel away. You don't actually "become" a buddha, you simply cease, slowly, to be deluded. And being a buddha is not being some omnipotent spiritual superman, but becoming at last a true human being.
We are building together a nation in which there are no second-class Australians.
The Kingdom of God is not a matter of getting individuals to heaven, but of transforming the life on earth into the harmony of heaven.
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