Help others solve their problems; standing farther away, you can often see matters more clearly than they do. . . The greatest service you can render someone else is helping him or her help themselves.
Baltasar GracianRead
Advice is sometimes transmitted more successfully through a joke than grave teaching.
Interpretation
Humor can be a more effective tool for imparting advice than serious instruction.
This quote suggests that humor can serve as a powerful medium for delivering wisdom and advice. Often, people might be more receptive to and remember messages conveyed through jokes and light-heartedness than those presented in a stern or serious manner, making humor a valuable tactic in teaching and sharing insights.
In practice
During a workshop on leadership, I shared a light-hearted anecdote that illustrated the importance of adaptability.
Help others solve their problems; standing farther away, you can often see matters more clearly than they do. . . The greatest service you can render someone else is helping him or her help themselves.
It is a novel kind of supremacy, the best that life can offer, to have as servants by skill those who by nature are our masters.
It is better to sleep on things beforehand than lie awake about them afterwards.
Two kinds of people are good at foreseeing danger: those who have learned at their own expense, and the clever people who learn a great deal at the expense of others.
The envious die not once, but as oft as the envied win applause.
Never participate in the secrets of those above you; you think you share the fruit, and you share the stones - the confidence of a prince is not a grant, but a tax
Initiate giving. Don't wait for someone to ask. See what happens - especially to you. You may find that you gain a greater clarity about yourself and about your relationships, as well as more energy rather than less. You may find that, rather than exhausting yourself or your resources, you will replenish them. Such is the power of mindful, selfless generosity. At the deepest level, there is no giver, no gift, and no recipient . . . only the universe rearranging itself.
People say, on the raft, you must have hallucinated. Baloney. We were sharper after 47 days than the day we started because our minds were empty of all the war and contamination; we had clean minds to fill with good thoughts. Every day we'd exercise our minds.
When what you read elevates your mind and fills you with noble aspirations, look for no other rule by which to judge a book; it is good, and is the work of a master-hand.
Greatness inspires envy, envy engenders spite, spite spawns lies.
Sometimes I walk into a situation and know someone is going to provoke me, and I just simply refuse to be provoked.
You must accept the truth from whatever source it comes.
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