Today’s idea

Monday, November 2

Pyrrhus beat the Romans at Asculum and lost most of his friends and officers doing it. When someone congratulated him, he answered “that one other such would utterly undo him.” A victory that costs this much is still called Pyrrhic.

From Parallel Lives by Plutarch

A new idea every day at midnight Pacific time.

Earlier days

Sunday, November 1

A small flame goes out when you throw something on it. A strong fire takes what you throw on it, burns it, and gets higher. Whatever is blocking you is not separate from the work. It is the material the work now has to use.

From Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Saturday, October 31

Someone insulted you, hit you, knocked you down, robbed you. You keep that list and read it again every night. Each reading makes the anger new again. People who stop reading the list are the ones whose anger finally goes quiet.

From Dhammapada by Anonymous
Friday, October 30

A rule about who gets served first, who speaks first, who bows to whom, looks like pure decoration from the outside. It’s closer to traffic control. Remove the traffic lights and the wanting underneath doesn’t go away, it just collides at the intersection.

From Xunzi by Xunzi
Thursday, October 29

A reed flute can sing only because it was cut from the reed bed. The crying inside the music is the memory of the wet ground it grew in. Your ache works the same way. It is proof you were rooted somewhere once, and a pull back toward it.

From The Essential Rumi by Rumi
Wednesday, October 28

Twisting the wording of a deal is its own kind of injustice. A general who agreed to a 30-day truce raided the enemy’s fields at night, because the deal said days. Romans already had a saying for this: “More law, less justice.”

From On Duties by Cicero
Tuesday, October 27

You arrived with nothing in your hands, and you’ll leave with nothing in your hands. Whatever pile you build in between doesn’t travel with you. Some people even manage to lose it before they die, so the whole labor of a life buys them exactly nothing, twice.

From Ecclesiastes by Qoheleth
Monday, October 26

You don’t have to look far for the pattern. When you carve a new ax handle, the model is the handle already in your hand. Treat people by the measure you already carry in yourself.

From The Doctrine of the Mean by Zisi
Sunday, October 25

Glaucon restates a view he doesn’t hold: people are just only out of fear. A shepherd named Gyges finds a ring that makes him invisible, and uses it to seduce the queen, kill the king and take the kingdom. Given that ring, a just man would do the same.

From The Republic by Plato
Saturday, October 24

Never go to war just because you are angry. Anger may in time change to gladness; vexation may be succeeded by content. But a kingdom that has once been destroyed can never come again into being.

From The Art of War by Sun Tzu
Friday, October 23

Why not leave Athens and keep quiet? Because talking every day about how to live is the greatest good a person has, and “the unexamined life is not worth living”. He knew the jury would find that the hardest part to believe.

From The Trial and Death of Socrates by Plato
Thursday, October 22

Character grows the way a crop does. A farmer in Sung, worried his corn was too short, pulled the stalks up to make them taller. He came home tired and said, “I have been helping the corn to grow long.” His son ran out and found it all withered.

From Mencius by Mencius
Wednesday, October 21

Pausanias says there are 2 kinds of love. The common kind wants a body and leaves when youth fades. The heavenly kind loves a person’s mind and character, and it lasts a lifetime. He says a quick attachment is a bad sign, since only time shows which kind you have.

From The Symposium by Plato
Tuesday, October 20

Heaven gives you a nature. Following it is your path, and learning is what keeps you on it. “The path may not be left for an instant. If it could be left, it would not be the path.”

From The Doctrine of the Mean by Zisi
Monday, October 19

Who wrote your laws, a god or a man? Crete says Zeus, Sparta says Apollo. The answer decides whether a law may ever be questioned.

From Laws by Plato
Sunday, October 18

Who deserves to be called wise? An old story says Pythagoras turned the title down, since “no man ought to be called wise, but only God,” and called himself a lover of wisdom instead. Historians think the story was made up generations later, in Plato’s circle.

From Lives of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius
Saturday, October 17

The price of a loaf of bread gets split three ways. Part goes to whoever owns the field, part to whoever put up the money to farm it, and part to the people who did the work. What decides the size of each part?

From On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation by David Ricardo
Friday, October 16

Some days go wrong before anything has happened. You wake up in a bad mood, and by lunch you’ve snapped at 2 people and they’ve snapped back. The mood came first. What you said came out of it, and so did what they said back.

From Dhammapada by Anonymous
Thursday, October 15

Asking what’s in it for you sounds harmless. A king asked a visiting teacher how he would profit the kingdom, and got a warning instead. If the king asks about profit, his nobles ask what profits their families, and everyone below grabs from the one above.

From Mencius by Mencius
Wednesday, October 14

You study to get a job, take the job to earn money, and want the money for something else again. The chain has to stop somewhere, or all your wanting would be empty. Whatever sits at the end, wanted for itself alone, is the good worth knowing.

From Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle
Tuesday, October 13

Sometimes the right thing to do means hurting people you love. A prince stands in his chariot between two armies and sees uncles, teachers and cousins on the other side. His hands shake, his bow slips, and he sits down and says he will not fight.

From Bhagavad Gita by Vyasa
Monday, October 12

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.

From Ecclesiastes by Qoheleth
Sunday, October 11

Take away your job, your looks, your name, even the thoughts in your head. Is anything left that is you? Teachers in India asked it for centuries, from about 2,700 years ago. Their best-known answer: something is left, and it is what the whole world comes from.

From Upanishads by Anonymous
Saturday, October 10

You’re honest partly because you might get caught. Now take that risk away. If nobody could ever see what you did, would being fair still be worth anything to you? One long conversation at a house in the harbour town of Athens is about that question.

From The Republic by Plato
Friday, October 9

A baby doesn’t need lessons to grab the biggest toy, or to scream the moment it’s hungry. Wanting things, and reacting badly when the wanting goes unmet, seems to come installed before any teaching happens. So where does patience come from, or sharing, or basic respect for somebody else’s turn?

From Xunzi by Xunzi
Thursday, October 8

Ask what makes a country rich, and gold is the easy answer. A better measure is the goods its people make and use in a year, set against how many people share them. When each worker produces more, the whole country is better supplied.

From The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
Wednesday, October 7

You use words like good and fair every day, and you probably think you know what they mean. Outside a court in Athens, a man was prosecuting his own father for letting a laborer die tied up in a ditch. He was sure he knew what holiness demanded.

From The Trial and Death of Socrates by Plato
Tuesday, October 6

You did careful work and nobody noticed. The Master says not to be upset by that. Worry about the opposite gap, the people you have failed to understand: “I will not be afflicted at men’s not knowing me; I will be afflicted that I do not know men.”

From The Analects by Confucius
Monday, October 5

What do you really want when you love someone? At a dinner in Athens, a group of friends decided to skip the heavy drinking and take up that question instead. Each man would give a speech in praise of Love, the god of desire, in turn around the room.

From The Symposium by Plato
Sunday, October 4

For a state, war is the most serious business there is. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. So it has to be studied with care before anyone marches, never left to temper or luck.

From The Art of War by Sun Tzu