Two kinds of people live a life without care: one kind are extremely worthy of praise, the other kind are extremely worthy of criticism. The first are those who care nothing for the pleasures of the world and the second (i.e. those who are deserving of criticism) care nothing for haya or modesty.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on two types of people who live carelessly, highlighting the distinction between virtuous and flawed carelessness.
Ibn Hazm presents a thought-provoking perspective on the nature of carelessness in life. He suggests that there are two groups of individuals: those who lead a life free from worldly pleasures and are to be admired, and those who, in their indifference, lack the virtue of modesty and are thus critique-worthy. This distinction serves to provoke deeper reflection on the values we hold and the different motivations behind our actions and states of being.
In practice
In a discussion about values, this quote could highlight the importance of virtue over hedonism.
When you compare yourself with others in matters of wealth, position, and health, you should look at people less favoured than yourself. When you compare yourself with others in matters of religion, knowledge and virtue, look at people who are better than yourself.
And though the years before I die _x000D_ Stretch out interminably, I _x000D_ Shall only count my life in truth _x000D_ As that brief hour of happy youth.
The wise man knows the only fitting price for his soul is a place in Paradise.
The god whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals.
Thoughtfulness for others, generosity, modesty, and self-respect are the qualities which make a real gentleman or lady.
Sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful than the facts.
Memoir is trustworthy and its truth assured when it seeks the relation of self to time, the piecing of the shards of personal experience into the starscape of history's night. The materials of memoir are humble, fugitive, a cottage knitting industry seeking narrative truth across the crevasse of time as autobiography folds itself into the vast, fluid essay that is history. A single voice singing its aria in a corner of the crowded world.
Laws to protect 'public health' are potentially infinite, especially once they no longer have to be supported by any research whatsoever.
The questions asked at the end of lie are very simple ones: Did I love well? Did I love the people around me, my community, the earth, in a deep way? And perhaps, Did I live fully? Did I offer myself to life?
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