“Both in the senate and when addressing individuals, use language that is seemly but not rhetorical. Be sane and wholesome in your speech.”
Marcus Aurelius (AD 120 – 180), Meditations
Tag: Quotations
Mr Execupundit offers some suggestions for that irresistible managerial tattoo, including:
- “We will either find a way, or make one.” – Hannibal
- “If you start to take Vienna, take Vienna.” – Napoleon
- “Optimism is a force multiplier.” – Colin Powell
I worked with a great leader who always used that Colin Powell quote.
Interestingly, if only because I’ve just discovered it myself, Marcus Aurelius died in Vienna (Vindobona as it was then) on March 17, 180AD. There is a (rather uninteresting) Mark Aurel Strasse close to the Roman Museum (Römermuseum) on Hoher Markt in the city centre.
Photo by Marco D’Emilia on Unsplash
Happy the man who, remote from busy life, is content, like the primitive race of mortals, to plough his ancestral lands with his own oxen, freed from all borrowing and lending.
Horace (65BC – 8BC)
Sincerity and goodness ought to have their own unmistakable odour, so that one who encounters this becomes straightway aware of it despite himself. A candour affected is a dagger concealed. The feigned friendship of the wolf is the most contemptible of all, and to be shunned beyond everything. A man who is truly good and sincere and well-meaning will show it by his looks, and no one can fail to see it.
Marcus Aurelius (AD 120 – 180), Meditations
No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life. There may be countless trails and bridges and demigods who would gladly carry you across; but only at the price of pawning and forgoing yourself. There is one path in the world that none can walk but you. Where does it lead? Don’t ask, walk!
Friedrich Nietzsche (1873), Schopenhauer as Educator
Hat-tip to the ever excellent Maria Popova at BrainPickings and this post on Nietzsche.
There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price only are this man’s lawful prey.
John Ruskin (1819 – 1900)
Everyone who receives the protection of society owes a return for the benefit.
John Stuart Mill (1859), On Liberty
Image: philosophers.co.uk
Your mind will be like its habitual thoughts; for the soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.
Marcus Aurelius (AD 120 – 180), Meditations (5.16)
The price of greatness is responsibility.
Winston Churchill (1943), Speech on receiving an honorary degree from Harvard
Image: Yousuf Karsh
“It is reason and wisdom which take away cares, not places affording wide views over the sea.”
Horace (65BC – 8BC), Epistles I, xi,25-6
Image: Andrew Munro
(This post originally appeared on the Burning Pine blog.)