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
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.
Interpretation
We often express gratitude for material gifts, but we tend to overlook our deeper obligations for life's fundamental blessings.
In this quote, Seneca the Elder highlights the irony of human gratitude, suggesting that while we readily appreciate minor gifts from friends, we take for granted the more profound aspects of existence, such as life, health, and the faculties that allow us to reason. He encourages us to recognize the greater responsibilities and gratitude we owe for these essential aspects of our lives, instead of just focusing on superficial or tangible assets.
In practice
In a speech about appreciating the essentials of life.
We should every night call ourselves to an account: What infirmity have I mastered today? What passions opposed! What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired?
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.
The sun also shines on the wicked.
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.
When we oppose the hidden conscience, it does us hurt. When we betray it, it judges us.
The fact is, the most painful and tragic lesson of the 20th century was that regimes based on racial superiority and religious hatred can't be trusted to keep their word to the international community.
Our Constitution is in actual operation; everything appears to promise that it will last; but in this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.
What is the essence of theosophy? It is the fact that man, being himself divine, can know the divinity whose life he shares. As an inevitable corollary to this supreme truth comes the fact of the brotherhood of man.
It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly.
I feel I have a lot to learn from English football and I am completely open to good influences in my way of thinking football. But I also have things to give them.
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