We should every night call ourselves to an account: What infirmity have I mastered today? What passions opposed! What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired?
Seneca The ElderRead
The sun also shines on the wicked.
Interpretation
Good fortune and happiness can occur to anyone, regardless of their morality.
This quote by Seneca the Elder implies that life is impartial; it bestows blessings like sunlight on both the virtuous and the wicked alike. It serves as a reminder that good and bad people alike experience the joys and challenges of life, highlighting the randomness and fairness of nature.
In practice
In a discussion about justice, this quote could illustrate that life does not always reward good behavior.
We should every night call ourselves to an account: What infirmity have I mastered today? What passions opposed! What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired?
We can be thankful to a friend for a few acres or a little money; and yet for the freedom and command of the whole earth, and for the great benefits of our being, our life, health, and reason, we look upon ourselves as under no obligation.
True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing.
Let us be brave in the face of adversity.
The courts of kings are full of people, but empty of friends.
What you think about yourself is much more important than what others think of you.
Abolish slavery tomorrow, and not a sentence or syllable of the Constitution need be altered. It was purposely so framed as to give no claim, no sanction to the claim, of property in man. If in its origin slavery had any relation to the government, it was only as the scaffolding to the magnificent structure, to be removed as soon as the building was completed.
In this treacherous world Nothing is the truth nor a lie. Everything depends on the color Of the crystal through which one sees it
Wretched men cringe before tyrants who have no power, the victims of their trivial hopes and fears. They do not realise that anger is hopeless, fear is pointless and desire all a delusion. He whose heart is fickle is not his own master, has thrown away his shield, deserted his post, and he forges the links of the chain that holds him.
Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith. We should live for the future, and yet should find our life in the fidelities of the present; the last is only the method of the first.
Most people catch their presuppositions from their family and surrounding society the way a child catches measles.
Granny Weatherwaz was a witch. That was quite acceptable in the Ramtops, and no one had a bad word to say about witches. At least, not if he wanted to wake up in the morning the same shape as he went to bed.
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