L19 · Lens
Exemplar council
Consult an internal jury of admired figures, each chosen for a specific trait: what would they do here?
Use: Decisions, temptation, adversity, conduct.
Boundary: Exemplars guide conduct; avoid comparison that breeds passivity.
Cues
Showing 15 of 15 cues
“To help others and be eager to share, not to be a pessimist, and never to doubt your friends’ affection for you.”
“I know that it gives one great inner force, calmness, and happiness to communicate with such great thinkers as Socrates, Epictetus, Arnold, Parker. ... They tell us about what is most important for humanity, about the meaning of life and about virtue.”
“Although I cannot move and I have to speak through a computer, in my mind I am free.”
“Concentrating hard on something that is important is ... I can’t succeed at all without doing it. I did not succeed in life by intelligence. I succeeded because I have a long attention span.”
“[Chekhov] made a vow to himself: no more bowing and apologising to people; no more complaining and blaming; no more disorderly living and wasting time. The answer to everything was work and love, work and love.”
“A child certainly allows himself to be impressed by the grand talk of his parents, but do they really imagine he is educated by it? Actually it is the parents’ lives that educate the child - what they add by word at best serves only to confuse him.”
“A wise man ought always to follow the paths beaten by great men, and to imitate those who have been supreme, so that if his ability does not equal theirs, at least it will savour of it.”
“The evening being come, I return home and go to my study; at the entrance I pull off my peasant-clothes, covered with dust and dirt, and put on my noble court dress, and thus becomingly re-clothed I pass into the ancient courts of the men of old, where, being lovingly received by them, I am fed with that food which is mine alone; where I do not hesitate to speak with them, and to ask for the reason of their actions, and they in their benignity answer me.”
Rusticus: read attentively
From his teacher Quintus Junius Rusticus, Marcus learned to read attentively rather than skimming and not to be satisfied with superficial knowledge.
Tolstoy's circle of reading
Tolstoy spent seventeen years collecting a wise thought for every day; in his late seventies, seriously ill and confronting mortality, he wrote the book and felt elevated by communion with the wisest people.
Zeno chose teaching over court favour
Zeno taught in Athens’ Painted Porch. He declined King Antigonus’ invitations to court and sent associates in his place.
Donald L. Hollowell: smart perseverance under injustice
Civil-rights attorney Donald Hollowell fought uphill across segregated Georgia day after day, winning the desegregation of the University of Georgia and freeing Martin Luther King Jr. while enduring hostile courts and constant danger without losing his composure: 'you can't get angry; you have to get smart.
Diogenes throwing away his wooden cup
Diogenes the Cynic, on seeing a child drink water from his hollowed hands, threw away his own wooden cup, demonstrating that practising what you preach means stripping away even small superfluities in action.
Socrates unfazed by belittlement
Mocked by Hippias for repeating himself, Socrates calmly turned the jibe into a boast, persisting throughout his life in exhorting Athenians to examine how they ought to live.
Cato ignores fashion
The Stoic Roman senator Cato deliberately ignored fashion and dressed differently, not for vainglory, but to accustom himself to being ashamed only of what was truly shameful.