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
