![]() Marcus’s advice is easier and truer: How much better it feels to let it go, to leave the wrongdoer to their wrongdoing. Because revenge is so costly, because the pursuit of it often wears on the one who covets it. There is a proverb about revenge: Before setting out for a journey of revenge, dig two graves. “The best revenge is not to be like that.” - Marcus Aurelius Remember that: You’re defined in this life not by your good luck or your bad luck, but your reaction to those strokes of fortune. The Stoics - of which Epictetus was one - would say that we don’t control what happens to us, all we control are our thoughts and reactions to what happens to us. This is true for almost all situations - what happens to us is an objective reality, how we respond is a subjective choice. Each are asked: “Why are you the way you are?” The answer for both is the same: “Well, it’s because my father was an alcoholic.” The same event, the same childhood, two different outcomes. One follows in his father’s footsteps and ends up struggling through life as a drunk, and the other becomes a successful, sober businessman. There is the story of the alcoholic father with two sons. “It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.” - Epictetus But there is not a person on the planet who would say that he had not made a fair trade, that he had not worn his life well and not lived a full one in those 60 years. Back in America he contracted a severe throat infection and was later diagnosed with inflammatory rheumatism, which temporarily confined him to a wheelchair (saying famously, “All right! I can work that way too!”) and then he died at age 60. On his famous “River of Doubt” expedition he developed a tropical fever and the toxins from an infection in his leg left him nearly dead. ![]() An assassination attempt left a bullet lodged in his body and it hastened his rheumatoid arthritis. Again, this epigram was prophetic for Roosevelt, because at only 54 years old, his body began to wear out. What followed was a montage of boxing, hiking, horseback riding, hunting, fishing, swimming, boldly charging enemy fire, and then a grueling work pace as one of the most prolific and admired presidents in American history. “ I will make my body,” he said, when told that he would not go far in this world with a brilliant mind in a frail body. Then, a conversation with his father sent him driven, almost maniacally in the other direction. He was sickly and fragile, doted on by worried parents. My choice is to wear out.” - Theodore RooseveltĪt the beginning of his life, few would have predicted that Theodore Roosevelt even had a choice in the matter. “We must all either wear out or rust out, every one of us. Each will change and evolve with you as you evolve (Heraclitus: “No man steps in the same river twice”) and yet each will remain strong and unyielding no matter how much you may one day try to wiggle out and away from them.įundamentally, each one will teach you how to be a better person. Each one is worth remembering, having queued in your brain for one of life’s crossroads or to drop at the perfect moment in conversation. Napoleon: “Never interrupt an enemy making a mistake.” François de La Rochefoucauld: “We hardly find any persons of good sense save those who agree with us.” Voltaire: “A long dispute means that both parties are wrong.”īelow are some wonderful epigrams that span some 21 centuries and 3 continents. “What is an epigram?” Coleridge asked, “A dwarfish whole Its body brevity, and wit its soul.” Epigrams are what Churchill was doing when he said: “To improve is to change, so to be perfect is to have changed often.” Or Balzac: “All happiness depends on courage and work.” Ah yes, epigrams are often funny too. How to have courage.Īnd they pack all this in in so few words. Today, they’re recorded on iPhones and in Evernote.īut whatever generation is doing it, whether they’re written by scribes in China or commoners in some European dungeon or simply passed along by a kindly grandfather, these little epigrams of life advice have taught essential lessons. Lovecraft, the collected proverbs of Erasmus, and the ceiling beams of Montaigne’s study. They appear in the plays of Shakespeare, the commonplace book of H. We find them carved in the rock of the Temple of Apollo and etched as graffiti on the walls of Pompeii. 21 Quotes That (If Applied) Change You Into a Better PersonĪs long as man has been alive, he has been collecting little sayings about how to live.
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