Dear me, I believe I am becoming a god. An emperor ought at least to die on his feet.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the nature of power and mortality.
In this quote, Vespasian expresses a profound realization about his rise to power, suggesting that with authority comes a divine-like status but also the inevitable truth of mortality. The mention of dying on his feet symbolizes dignity in death, contrasting the various ways leaders may meet their end, highlighting a philosophy of leadership and legacy.
In practice
This quote can be used during a discussion on leadership at a conference.
As soon as you look at the world through an ideology you are finished. No reality fits an ideology. Life is beyond that. That is why people are always searching for a meaning to life. But life has no meaning; it cannot have meaning because meaning is a formula; meaning is something that makes sense to the mind. Every time you make sense out of reality, you bump into something that destroys the sense you made . Meaning is only found when you go beyond meaning.
The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason.
I many no longer depend on pleasant impulses to bring me before the Lord. I must rather response to principles I know to be right, whether I feel them to be enjoyable or not.
What are the stars but points in the body of God where we insert the healing needles of our terror and longing?
Here rests his head upon the lap of earth, A youth to fortune and to fame unknown: Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth, And Melancholy mark'd him for her own.
Truth can hardly be expected to adapt herself to the crooked policy and wily sinuosities of worldly affairs; for truth, like light, travels only in straight lines.
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