Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.
Seneca The YoungerRead
Let us say what we feel, and feel what we say; let speech harmonize with life.
Interpretation
This quote encourages sincerity in communication, urging us to align our words with our true feelings and experiences.
Seneca the Younger emphasizes the importance of authenticity in expression. He suggests that our speech should reflect our genuine emotions and thoughts, creating harmony between what we say and how we live. This alignment fosters deeper connections and understanding in our relationships and interactions, ultimately leading to a more fulfilling and truthful existence.
In practice
During a team meeting, I shared my true feelings about the project's direction using Seneca's quote to inspire open dialogue.
Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.
No tree becomes rooted and sturdy unless many a wind assails it. For by its very tossing it tightens its grip and plants its roots more securely; the fragile trees are those that have grown in a sunny valley.
Slavery takes hold of few, but many take hold of slavery.
To be able to endure odium is the first art to be learned by those who aspire to power.
Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness.
Loyalty is the holiest good in the human heart.
During the first formative centuries of its existence, Christianity was separated from and indeed antagonistic to the state, with which it only later became involved. From the lifetime of its founder, Islam was the state, and the identity of religion and government is indelibly stamped on the memories and awareness of the faithful from their own sacred writings, history, and experience.
Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
No man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history.
Freedom from labor itself is not new; it once belonged among the most firmly established privileges of the few. In this instance, it seems as though scientific progress and technical developments had been only taken advantage of to achieve something about which all former ages dreamed but which none had been able to realize.
War can only be qualified by its object, and there is neither foreign war nor civil war, there is only just or unjust war.
One day humanity will play with law just as children play with disused objects, not in order to restore them to their canonical use but to free them from it for good.
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