Knowledge Flashcards
Success
Do not tear from place to place and unsettle yourself with one move after another. Restlessness of that sort is symptomatic of a sick mind.
To be everywhere is to be nowhere.
You ask what is the proper limit to a person’s wealth? First, having what is essential, and second, having what is enough.
Friendship
After friendship is formed you must trust, but before that you must judge.
Those people who, contrary to Theophrastus’ advice, judge a man after they have made them their friend instead of the other way round, certainly put the cart before the horse.
Confidences, friends and whether or not to give them. What the result is of sharing too many or too few.
Pomponius - ‘some men have shrunk so far into dark corners that objects in bright daylight seem quite blurred to them’.
Depression and self-analysis
You are running away in your own company. You have to lay aside the load on your spirit. (Seneca)
So, to the best of your ability, demonstrate your own guilt, conduct enquiries of your own into all the evidence against yourself. (Cicero)
Alexander the Great’s premise. And, the correct approach to a viable work-life balance.
When some state or other offered Alexander a part of its territory and half of all its property he told him that, ‘he hadn’t come to Asia with the intention of accepting whatever they cared to give him, but of letting them keep whatever he chose to leave them.’
Work ethos - It’s not my intention to accept whatever time is left over from you; you shall have, instead, what I reject.
Fate
For Fate. The willing leads, the unwilling drags along.
Pomponius on spineless inertia
‘Some men have shrunk so far into dark corners that objects in bright daylight seem quite blurred to them
Who to associate with
Associate with people who are likely to improve you.
Avoid blatant and eccentrically misguided self-advertisement
Inwardly everything should be different but our outward face should conform with the crowd.
We are however different from the mob.
Helpful recommendations
Avoid whatever is approved of by the mob and things that are a gift of chance, they are snares.
The wise man is content with himself.
The wise man lacked nothing but needed a great number of things, whereas the fool needs nothing (for he does not know how to use anything) but lacks everything.
Philosophy - Salvator Rosa
Be silent, unless what you have to say is better than silence.
