I would rather live a short life of glory than a long one of obscurity.
Alexander The GreatRead
But truly, if I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.
Interpretation
This quote reflects a preference for a philosophical life over one of power and conquest.
In this statement, Alexander the Great expresses admiration for Diogenes, the ancient Greek philosopher known for his ascetic lifestyle and disdain for material wealth and social status. By stating that if he were not a king, he would choose to be a philosopher like Diogenes, Alexander highlights the value he sees in wisdom and simplicity, contrasting it with his own life of power and ambition.
In practice
During a philosophy lecture on the values of simplicity in life.
I would rather live a short life of glory than a long one of obscurity.
Are you still to learn that the end and perfection of our victories is to avoid the vices and infirmities of those whom we subdue?
Now you fear punishment and beg for your lives, so I will let you free, if not for any other reason so that you can see the difference between a Greek king and a barbarian tyrant, so do not expect to suffer any harm from me. A king does not kill messengers.
In the end, when it's over, all that matters is what you've done.
A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient.
I am dying with the help of too many physicians.
For white men, to live is to own, or to try to own more, or to die trying to own more. Their appetites are astonishing! They own wardrobes, slaves, carriages, houses, warehouses, and ships. They own ports, cities, plantations, valleys, mountains, chains of islands. They own this world, its jungles, its skies, and its seas. Yet they complain that Dejima is a prison. They complain they are not free.
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
I know some say, let us have good laws, and no matter for the men that execute them: but let them consider, that though good laws do well, good men do better: for good laws may want good men, and be abolished or evaded [invaded in Franklin's print] by ill men; but good men will never want good laws, nor suffer ill ones.
I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.
No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses.
I got a label because I was Hispanic and a woman and [therefore] I had to be liberal.
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