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.
Plays round the head, but comes not to the heart. One self-approving hour whole years outweighs Of stupid starers and of loud huzzas; And more true joy Marcellus exil'd feels Than Cæsar with a senate at his heels. In parts superior what advantage lies? Tell (for you can) what is it to be wise? 'T is but to know how little can be known; To see all others' faults, and feel our own.
The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.
I'm encouraging you to know what you're worth. And know that no matter who has more money in class, who has more stuff, who has a country house - nobody is worth more than anybody else.
It is not by sitting still at a grand distance and calling the human race larvae that men are to be helped.
Money is like manure, its only good if you spread it around.
When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less.
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