The best teachers of humanity are the lives of great men.
— Samuel Johnson
CREATIVITY
WHAT THIS MEANS
Seeing how a person actually lived teaches more than any set of principles about how to live. A life shows the trade-offs, the cost of each decision and what somebody did on the bad days, none of which fits into a rule. Principles tell you what is right; a life shows you what it takes. That is why biography stays with people when instruction slides off.
Choose one person whose way of working or living you admire and find out what their ordinary days were like. Look for what they gave up. Then ask which of those trades you would actually make.
A QUESTION TO SIT WITH
Whose life have you studied closely enough to learn from?
MORE IN LEARNING & CURIOSITY
- A dwarf sees farther than the giant when he has the giant’s shoulder to mount on.
- As the soil, however rich it may be, cannot be productive without culture, so the mind without cultivation can never…
- Precepts or maxims are of great weight; and a few useful ones at hand do more toward a happy life than whole volumes…
Free, with nothing to buy inside it.