Trained, indeed, to consider and live for myself.(Lucretius) Now I find my opinions extremely bold and persistent in condemning my own insufficiency. Indeed, this is a subject which occupies my mind as much as any other. The world always looks outward, I turn my gaze inward;...
I’ve owned an iPhone for several years now. The gadget allows me to customise everything - data usage, app synchronisation, phone encryption, even how loud I want the camera shutter to sound. How many of these have I set up so far? You guessed it:...
Early on in his career, the ambitious statesman and general Alcibiades of Athens (450-404 B.C.) fashioned a formidable weapon that became the source of his power. In every encounter with others, he would sense their moods and tastes, then carefully tailor his words and actions...
When I was a small child of, I think, about five or six, I staged a competition in my head, a contest to decide the greatest poem in the world. There were two finalists: Blake’s “The Little Black Boy” and Stephen Foster’s “Swanee River.” I...
Gnothi Seauton – Know Thyself. These words were inscribed above the entrance to the temple of Apollo at Delphi, site of the sacred Oracle. In ancient Greece, people would visit the Oracle hoping to find out what destiny had in store for them or what course of action...
Then there are also the pleasures of the chase. Many a time has Venus been put ignominiously to flight, vanquished by Apollo's sister. Sometimes, accompanied by a hound with a keen scent, you may hunt the flying hare; sometimes spread your nets on the wooded...
Personality is that which is given by others to you -- by the parents, by the teachers, by the priest, by the society -- whatever they have said about you. And you have been desiring to be respectable, to be respected, so you have been...
The essay is evidently addressed to an exile from Sardis, probably at the moment in Athens, who has been plausibly identified with the Menemachus of Sardis for whom Plutarch wrote the essay Praecepta Gerendae Reipublicae. Plutarch does not state the terms of exile, except to say that...
Sisyphus was the son of King Aeolus of Thessaly and Enarete. He was the founder and first king of Ephyra (supposedly the original name of Corinth).He was the father of Glaucus, Ornytion, Almus, and Thersander by the nymph Merope, the brother of Salmoneus, and the...
Poverty: You’re not being serious now! You’re turning this into a farce, a bad comedy! You know very well that the sort of people that I create are far better than those created by Wealth! Both, the brain and the body of my men are far...
