Authority and place demonstrate and try the tempers of men, by moving every passion and discovering every frailty.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that authority tests human character by stirring emotions and revealing weaknesses.
Plutarch's quote highlights how positions of power and societal roles expose the true nature of individuals. When authority acts upon people, it can evoke a range of emotions, from pride to fear, ultimately leading to the revelation of their vulnerabilities and flaws. This passage reflects on the idea that the way individuals respond to authority can profoundly indicate their moral and emotional strength.
In practice
In a discussion about leadership qualities in a seminar.
Sometimes small incidents, rather than glorious exploits, give us the best evidence of character. So, as portrait painters are more exact in doing the face, where the character is revealed, than the rest of the body, I must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the marks of the souls of men.
It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such a one as is unworthy of him; for the one is only belief - the other contempt.
Come back with your shield - or on it
The richest soil, if uncultivated, produces the rankest weeds.
For the correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.
Our senses through ignorance of Reality, falsely tell us that what appears to be, is. FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real
Saying that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say.
They [anarchists] spring from a single seed, no matter the flowering of their ideas. The seed is liberty. And that is all it is. It is not a socialist seed. It is not a capitalist seed. It is not a mystical seed. It is not a determinist seed. It is simply a statement. We can be free. After that itβs all choice and chance.
In war, truth is the first casualty.
I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.
The words of confirmation into the Church are an invitation: 'Receive the Holy Ghost.' And that choice must be made not once, but every day, every hour, every minute.
These most crafty enemies [the devils] have filled and inebriated with gall and bitterness the Church, the spouse of the Immaculate Lamb, and have laid impious hands on Her most sacred possessions. In the Holy Place itself, where has been set up the See of the most holy Peter and the Chair of Truth for the light of the world, they have raised the throne of their abominable impiety, with the iniquitous design that when the Pastor has been struck, the sheep may be scattered.
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