And the winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.
Interpretation
Skilled individuals are better equipped to handle challenges that come their way.
This quote by Edward Gibbon emphasizes that those who possess knowledge and skills are more capable of overcoming obstacles. Just as navigators skillfully manage the tumultuous winds and waves of the sea, competent individuals can leverage their abilities to steer through life's difficulties more effectively.
In practice
In a motivational speech about facing life's difficulties wisely.
It was Rome, on the fifteenth of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.
I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps, the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatsoever might be the future date of my History, the life of the historian must be short and precarious.
The first and indispensable requisite of happiness is a clear conscience.
In discussing Barbarism and Christianity I have actually been discussing the Fall of Rome.
Many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant.
The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon Earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings.
I want to be an honest man and a good writer.
Without the freedom to criticize, there is no true praise.
Not that I am ashamed of my mind or body, my birth or breeding, my actions or fortunes, for my bashfulness is in my nature, not for any crime.
All the holy words you read and all the holy words you speak are as nothing if you do not act upon them. Even if you read little and say little but live the right way, forsaking craving, hatred and delusion, you will know the truth and find calmness and will show others the path.
Please learn the pragmatics of expressing fear: sometimes words that seem to express really invoke. This can be tricky.
Maturity is often more absurd than youth and very frequently is most unjust to youth.
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