Inspiration from The Past (Part I).
Am writing this from Porto Heli in the Peloponnese,
listening to Leonard Cohen (more on that next week) and studying a wonderful
set of photographs of The Acropolis by Marina Vernicos on behalf of CreAid – a
non-profit with a humanitarian purpose served through Creativity and Art – and
populated by dynamic creative, imaginative, passionate entrepreneurs.
The project MY ACROPOLIS comes complete with many
quotes from the Greek Philosophers – which I last visited aged 14 as a
Lancaster Royal Grammar School student.
Rereading them, it became obvious that many of my principles and beliefs
were based on these philosophies – much to my surprise. Osmosis is a wonderful concept. A sampler of these teachings from 496BC to
119AD …
On Love:
·
Love is all we have, the
only way that each can help the other. (Euripides)
·
At the touch of love
everyone becomes a poet. (Plato)
For Robin.
On Friendship:
·
Of all the things that
wisdom provides to make life entirely happy, much the greatest is the
possession of friendship. (Epicurus)
·
Be slow to fall into
friendship, but when thou art in, continue firm and constant. (Socrates)
·
I don’t need a friend who
changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.
(Plutarch)
·
It is not so much our
friends’ help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us. (Epicurus)
On Wisdom:
·
Wisdom begins in wonder. (Socrates)
·
As for me, all I know is
that I know nothing. (Socrates)
·
Men should strive to
think much and know little. (Democritus)
·
To make no mistakes is
not in the power of man, but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good
learn wisdom for the future. (Plutarch)
·
Employ your time in
improving yourself by other men’s writings, so that you shall gain easily what
others have labored hard for. (Socrates)
·
The most useful piece of
learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue. (Antisthenes)
·
It takes a wise man to
recognise a wise man. (Xenophanes)
Thank you Jim Bates (LRGS Teacher, RIP April 2018) for
opening a young boy’s eyes to the Classics.
KR