Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life

by Eric Greitens

“Culture” was originally a word for the tilling and tending of the land. Later, people made an analogy and suggested that you could cultivate yourself.

Seneca had a great response: “People say: ‘What good does it do to point out the obvious?’ A great deal of good; for we sometimes know facts without paying attention to them. Advice . . . merely engages the attention and rouses us, and concentrates the memory, and keeps it from losing its grip. We miss much that is set before our eyes.”