The School of Life

♦️ What should be our attitude to difficulties?... In the sphere of the unknown, we should regard difficulties as a hidden treasure! As a rule, the more difficult things are, the more they can help us. It is worth less if the difficulties arise from your struggle with yourself. But when they come from the increasing resistance of the object, it's splendid! The most promising path for investigation is that on which the greatest external meets the smallest internal resistance. Setbacks must be regarded as showing the need for further application of effort and concentration of the will. If great exertions have already been made, setbacks are a still greater cause for rejoicing! They mean that our crowbar has struck the iron treasure chest! And overcoming increased difficulties is all the more valuable in that the agent grows in stature with each setback, grows in proportion to the difficulties he meets! That doesn't mean we can never forgo further effort. Our crowbar may have struck a stone instead. Once convinced of that, or if your resources are insufficient, or in violently hostile surroundings, you may never even abandon the goal itself. But it is important to examine your reasons meticulously... Now hear the rule of the last few inches! The region of the final inches! What that means is immediately obvious in the Language of Utter Clarity. The work is nearly completed, the goal is almost attained, everything seems to have been mastered and finalized, but the quality of the thing is not quite right. Finishing touches are necessary, perhaps further research. At that moment of weariness, the temptation to abandon the work without perfecting it is particularly strong. Work in the sector of the last few inches is very, very complicated but also particularly valuable because it is carried out by the most perfect means! The rule for the last few inches amounts to just this: Do not give up work at this point! Do not put it off, or the agent's current of thought will be diverted from the region of the last few inches! And do not begrudge time spent on it, knowing that the goal is not speedy completion but the achievement of perfection. ✨ Alexander Solzhenitsyn, In the First Circle @TheSchoolOfLife

✨Alexander Solzhenitsyn, In the First Circle @TheSchoolOfLife

🔺"If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past." ✨Baruch Spinoza @TheSchoolOfLife

🔺"We are not fighting for a definitive victory in the indefinite future. It is the greatest possible victory to be, and to have been. No defeat can deprive us of the success of having existed for some moment of time in a universe that seems indifferent to us. ✨Norbert Wiener — I Am a Mathematician (Autobiography) @TheSchoolOfLife

✨HAUSER - Now We Are Free (Gladiator) @TheSchoolOfLife

♦️ As a poet, there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language from corruption. And that is particularly serious now. It's being so quickly corrupted. When it's corrupted, people lose faith in what they hear, and this leads to violence. 🌟 W. H Auden @TheSchoolOfLife

🔷. . . it is silly To refuse the tasks of time And, overlooking our lives, Cry—“Miserable wicked me, How interesting I am.” We would rather be ruined than changed, We would rather die in our dread Than climb the cross of the moment And let our illusions die. ✨W. H. Auden, THE AGE OF ANXIETY @TheSchoolOfLife

🔶 Decision is a risk rooted in the courage of being free. ✨Paul Tillich @TheSchoolOfLife

✨Deep Thinking in a Distracted World: Cal Newport and Stephen Blackwood @TheSchoolOfLife