Never promise more than you can perform.
Publilius SyrusRead
What a tragedy is help where it harms what it supports!
Interpretation
Offering help can sometimes lead to adverse outcomes, undermining the very purpose of support.
This quote by Publilius Syrus highlights the irony that assistance can sometimes create more harm than good. It suggests that aid, when misapplied or misunderstood, may inadvertently damage what it was meant to protect or uplift, urging us to be mindful of how we choose to support others.
In practice
During a team meeting, this quote could be used to discuss effective ways to offer assistance to colleagues.
Never promise more than you can perform.
Pain forces even the innocent to lie.
In a heated argument we are apt to lose sight of the truth.
Admonish your friends privately, but praise them openly.
The miser is as much in want of what he has as of what he has not.
He who lives only for himself is truly dead to others.
Become the director, producer, choreographer of your own story
If a conclusion is not poetically balanced, it cannot be scientifically true.
There must be another life, she thought, sinking back into her chair, exasperated. Not in dreams; but here and now, in this room, with living people. She felt as if she were standing on the edge of a precipice with her hair blown back; she was about to grasp something that just evaded her. There must be another life, here and now, she repeated. This is too short, too broken. We know nothing, even about ourselves.
And even if you were in some prison, the walls of which let none of the sounds of the world come to your senses - would you not then still have your childhood, that precious, kingly possession, that treasure-house of memories?
The Universe is very, very big. It also loves a paradox. For example, it has some extremely strict rules. Rule number one: Nothing lasts forever. Not you or your family or your house or your planet or the sun. It is an absolute rule. Therefore when someone says that their love will never die, it means that their love is not real, for everything that is real dies. Rule number two: Everything lasts forever.
As an atheist, I think there are lots of things religions get up to which are of value to non-believers - and one of those things is trying to be a bit better than we normally manage to be.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.