Lives
by Plutarch · first published 1564
50% recommend50% neutral
Character studies comparing statesmen and generals of pre-Christian Greece and Rome.
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The Conquest of Happiness by Bertrand Russell. Never knew unhappiness after I read this. Highly recommended. Another one is Méditations by Marcus Aurelius. Lives by Plutarch if you have the patience.
on “Ask HN: What are good resources for life advice?” ↗…that 99.99% of the time is to befriend and get on with people as far as possible. The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay - Just a great story about a young, bullied kid in South Africa who learns to box. Lives of the Greeks and Romans by Plutarch - shows you that human nature hasn't changed much in 2,000 years.
on “Ask HN: Which books have made you introspect?” ↗I would rather take Plutarch than either of them, the very tricks and manipulations described in his Lives are still what politicians still use day to day to get what they want done.
on “Some Favorite Non-Technical Books (2018)” ↗I have browsed through the The Harvard Classics [1], but totally missed Cicero. I read XII. Lives, by Plutarch, but IX. On Friendship, On Old Age & Letters, by Cicero, must have seemed like a bunch of platitudes at that time. Now I know better and will read it. [1] http://www.bartleby.com/hc/
on “The Eternal Lorem Ipsum” ↗Hmm, I dug further. The story probably comes from Plutarch (Lives), "[Crassus] would buy houses that were afire, and houses which adjoined those that were afire, and these their owners would let go at a trifling price owing to their fear and uncertainty"[1]. Plutarch…
on “80% of orgs that paid the ransom were hit again” ↗…under this prejudice when they find that Shakespeare’s plays, and notably Hamlet, that happy hunting-ground of self-expressionists, are merely adaptations of plays by other writers, scraps of Holinshed, Lives by Plutarch, or excerpts from the Gesta Romanorum; that Handel copied out into his own works whole movements by Arne; that the Scherzo of Beethoven’s C minor Symphony begins by reproducing the Finale…
on “Copying is the way design works (2020)” ↗