Friendship is the only thing in the world concerning the usefulness of which all mankind are agreed.
Marcus Tullius CiceroRead
It is a great thing to know your vices.
Interpretation
Recognizing your own flaws is a crucial step towards personal growth.
Cicero emphasizes the importance of self-awareness in understanding one's shortcomings or vices. By acknowledging our weaknesses, we can work towards self-improvement and make better choices in our lives. This practice of self-reflection allows individuals to develop a deeper understanding of themselves, leading to personal growth and wiser decision-making.
In practice
During a personal development workshop, this quote could serve as a discussion starter about self-awareness.
Friendship is the only thing in the world concerning the usefulness of which all mankind are agreed.
Those wars are unjust which are undertaken without provocation. For only a war waged for revenge or defence can actually be just.
Orators are most vehement when their cause is weak.
Nothing contributes to the entertainment of the reader more, than the change of times and the vicissitudes of fortune.
No one has the right to be sorry for himself for a misfortune that strikes everyone.
Advice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey's end.
Not knowing it was hard; knowing it was harder
Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.
All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day.
You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day. This is a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind. That's the only thing you should be trying to control.
You can’t buy that kind of empowerment. To just know that as far as you are aware, you have not got a price; that there is not an amount of money large enough to make you compromise even a tiny bit of principle that, as it turned out, would make no practical difference anyway. I’d advise everyone to do it, otherwise you’re going to end up mastered by money and that’s not a thing you want ruling your life.
Appearance is something absolute, but reality is not that way - everything is interdependent, not absolute. So that view is very helpful to maintain a peace of mind because the main destroyer of a peaceful mind is anger.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.