I had much rather be adorned by beauty of character than by jewels. Jewels are the gift of fortune, character comes from within.
PlautusRead
Things we do not expect, happen more frequently than we wish.
Interpretation
Unexpected events happen more often than we'd like to admit.
This quote by Plautus reflects on the unpredictable nature of life, suggesting that the unforeseen occurrences can be both surprising and troublesome. It highlights the reality that despite our best efforts to plan and control our circumstances, unexpected events are a common part of the human experience, often leading to challenges we may have wished to avoid.
In practice
In a motivational speech about resilience, one might refer to this quote to illustrate the importance of adapting to unexpected challenges.
I had much rather be adorned by beauty of character than by jewels. Jewels are the gift of fortune, character comes from within.
Property is unstable, and youth perishes in a moment. Life itself is held in the grinning fangs of Death, Yet men delay to obtain release from the world. Alas, the conduct of mankind is surprising.
The gods confound the man who first found out How to distinguish hours! Confound him, too, Who in this place set up a sun-dial, To cut and hack my days so wretchedly Into small portions.
I would rather be adorned by beauty of character than jewels. Jewels are the gift of fortune, while character comes from within.
If I can only keep my good name, I shall have riches enough.
Spice a dish with love and it pleases every palate.
I lapsed into my pathetic cut-off period. Often with humans, both good and bad, my senses simply shut off, they get tired, I give up. I am polite. I nod. I pretend to understand because I don’t want anybody to be hurt. That is the one weakness that has lead me into the most trouble. Trying to be kind to others I often get my soul shredded into a kind of spiritual pasta. No matter. My brain shuts off. I listen. I respond. And they are too dumb to know that I am not there.
When I circled the moon and looked back at Earth, my outlook on life and my viewpoint of Earth changed... Earth is a spaceship, just like Apollo - and just like Apollo, the crew must learn to live and work together. We must learn to manage the resources of this world with new imagination.
Britain is A world by itself, and we will nothing pay For wearing our own noses.
The idea, therefore, that religious faith is somehow a sacred human convention—distinguished, as it is, both by the extravagance of its claims and by the paucity of its evidence—is really too great a monstrosity to be appreciated in all its glory. Religious faith represents so uncompromising a misuse of the power of our minds that it forms a kind of perverse, cultural singularity—a vanishing point beyond which rational discourse proves impossible.
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow: In Flanders fields.
When people gain income, they gain choice, and that is fundamental to dignity.
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