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.
A man is hindered and distracted in proportion as he draws outward things to himself.
Let me but find it in my heart to say, When vagrant wishes beckon me astray, "This is my work; my blessing, not my doom; Of all who live, I am the one by whom This work can best be done in the right way."
If we know anything about a path at all, it's only because of the Great ones that have gone before us. Out of their love and kindness, they have left some footprints for us to follow. So, in the same way that they wish for us, we wish that all beings everywhere, including ourselves, be safe, be happy, have good health, and enough to eat. And may we all live at ease of heart with whatever comes to us in life.
The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly.
Meditation is not an escape. Meditation is the acceptance of life in its totality, with a view to transforming it for the highest manifestation of the divine Truth here on earth
I'd rather be strongly wrong than weakly right.
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