HKB
3 passages · search this phrase →
Often appears with: education and the training of the young · trade, markets, and merchants · the passions and the emotions · solon · pisistratus · philosophical leisure · pain as distraction · moderate sorrow · marsian war · lucullus · learning and attention · history and the writing of history
Usually: curiosity (3) · argument (1) · narrative (1) · reflection (1) · crisis of belief (1) · wonder (1)
“Since all the powers of the soul are rooted in the one essence of the soul, it must needs happen, when the intention of the soul is strongly drawn towards the action of one power, that it is withdrawn from the action of another power.” Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) · insight
“Now it is evident that sensible pain above all draws the soul's attention to itself; because it is natural for each thing to tend wholly to repel whatever is contrary to it.” Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) · observation
Plutarch begins the Solon section, summarizing claims about Solon’s parentage and friendship with Pisistratus, and using poems and anecdotes to argue Solon was shaped by beauty, commerce, and a love of learning.
of their love and dear affection. For that Solon was not proof against beauty, nor of courage to stand up to passion and meet it, Hand to hand as in the ring-- we may conjecture by his poems, and one of his laws, in which there are practices forbidden to slaves, which he would appear, therefore, to recommend to freemen. Pisistratus, it is stated, was similarly attached to one Charmus; he it was who dedicated the f…
Plutarch describes Lucullus’s lifelong love of liberal studies and philosophy, his early promise to write about the Marsian war, and his career steps after Pompey’s conflict and through the Marsian and Mithridatic wars.
Dried up and perished with the want of wit; but even in his younger days he addicted himself to the study, simply for its own sake, of the liberal arts; and when advanced in years, after a life of conflicts, he gave his mind, as it were, its liberty, to enjoy in full leisure the refreshment of philosophy; and summoning up his contemplative faculties, administered a timely check, after his difference with Pompey, to …
Pain and sorrow can sometimes increase learning: acute pain distracts the soul from study, but moderate sorrow or pain can aid by reducing excess pleasure or by eliciting sustained attention.
vii, 14: and (Ecclus. 11:29) it is stated that "the affliction of an hour maketh one forget great delights." Therefore pain, instead of taking away, increases the faculty of learning. Obj. 3: Further, inward sorrow surpasses outward pain, as stated above (Q. 35, A. 7). But man can learn while sorrowful. Much more, therefore, can he learn while in bodily pain. *On the contrary,* Augustine says (Soliloq. i, 12): "Alt…