Cicero’s On Old Age: four complaints and four answers
Many people fear old age. More than two thousand years ago Cicero wrote a small book to show that it can be a period of meaning, learning and friendship.
Wisdom
Philosophy, thinkers and the lessons that have stood the test of centuries.
35 articles
Heraclitus and the river: the wisdom of change in the fragments of an "obscure" philosopher
"You cannot step into the same river twice." This is perhaps Heraclitus’s best-known saying, but the form we know is not exactly his. Its history teaches us something about change and about quotations.
Plato’s cave: why education is a turning of the gaze
About 2,400 years ago Plato described a scene that almost every philosophy student knows: people chained in a cave, who take the shadows on the wall for reality.
Benjamin Franklin’s thirteen virtues: a notebook for character
In his youth Benjamin Franklin set out to achieve "moral perfection". He did not achieve it. But the method he invented to try is one of the earliest examples of habit tracking.
Albert Camus and Sisyphus: how to love life in a world that does not answer
Sisyphus was condemned to push a rock up a mountain for ever. For Camus he is not a symbol of failure but of a man who accepts his fate and still chooses to live fully.
Marie Curie: from the secret university of Warsaw to two Nobel Prizes
Maria Skłodowska could not study at university in her homeland because she was a woman. Thirty years later she had two Nobel Prizes and had changed physics and chemistry.
The Death of Ivan Ilyich: Lev Tolstoy’s novella about an "ordinary" life
Ivan Ilyich did everything that was expected of him: a career, a marriage, a fine home. Only when he fell seriously ill did he begin to ask whether all this had been real life.
Blaise Pascal: the mathematician who wrote about the "thinking reed"
Pascal was one of the most brilliant minds of the seventeenth century. But his most widely read book is not mathematics: it is a collection of notes on why people run away from themselves.
Michel de Montaigne: the man who invented the essay by writing about himself
Montaigne did not want to write a great philosophical treatise. He wanted to test his thoughts on everything, from friendship to death, and so he gave his name to a new genre: the essay.
Boethius and The Consolation of Philosophy: the book written before an execution
At the start of the sixth century, one of the most powerful men in Italy lost everything in a short time. In prison, awaiting death, he wrote one of the most widely read books of the Middle Ages.
Laozi and the Daodejing: the wisdom of water that does not fight
Few books have been translated as often as the Daodejing. It is short, poetic and often obscure, but some of its images, such as water wearing away stone, remain powerful.
Confucius (Kongzi): the teacher who put learning at the centre of life
Confucius left no book written in his own hand. Yet his words, recorded by his students, have shaped how hundreds of millions of people have lived, learned and governed.