Plutarch quote: “These are the materials for reflection which history affords to those who choose to make use of them.”

“Why then dost thou choose to act in the same way? and why dost thou not leave these agitations which are foreign to nature, to those who cause them and those who are moved by them? And why art thou not altogether intent upon the right way of making use of things which happen to thee? for then thou wilt use them well, and they will be material for thee. Only attend to thyself, and resolve to be a good man in every act which thou doest; and remember…”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

VII, 58
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VII

“Why then dost thou choose to act in the same way? and why dost thou not leave these agitations which are foreign to nature, to those who cause them and those who are moved by them? And why art thou not altogether intent upon the right way of making use of things which happen to thee?”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

for then thou wilt use them well, and they will be material for thee. Only attend to thyself, and resolve to be a good man in every act which thou doest; and remember...
Source: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VII, 58

“Those who need leaders are not qualified to choose them.”

Michael Malice (1976) American writer

Tweeted on March 2, 2020 https://twitter.com/michaelmalice/status/1234604154741497857, repeated subsequently.

“We are who we are, because of those we choose to love and because of those who love us.”

Kate Mosse book The Winter Ghosts

Variant: And I shall set this last truth down. We are who we are because of those we choose to love and because of those who love us.
Source: The Winter Ghosts

“We all love best not those who offend us least, nor those who have done most for us, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

“The materials of action are variable, but the use we make of them should be constant.”

Epictetus (50–138) philosopher from Ancient Greece

How Nobleness of Mind may be consistent with Prudence, Chap. v.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Religion and education meet in their responsibility to make possible the abundant life—the terms are intellectual and spiritual, rather than material. Humane living is assured only to those … who have disciplined themselves to choose and who have the ardor to strive for the excellent “with heart and soul and mind.””

Aurelia Henry Reinhardt (1877–1948) American educator and social activist

Address at Ohio State University, 1940, as quoted in Unitarian Universalist Women's Heritage Society Archives, 3 July 2018, Aurelia Isabel Henry Reinhardt (1877-1948) http://www.uuwhs.org/womenwest.php,

“We today have that same power if we but choose it, but choose it we must. What makes each of us unique is the individual choices we make. There will always be doubters, those who prefer inaction. I have heard it all, but I am still a believer in the dream. I choose to believe.”

Yolanda King (1955–2007) American actress

2000s

“Those who are making history seldom have time to record it.”

Luther Burbank (1849–1926) American botanist, horticulturist and pioneer in agricultural science

A Word to the Reader, (July 1, 1920) How Plants are Trained to Work for Man: Plant breeding (1921) Vol. 1. https://books.google.com/books?id=E0MyAQAAMAAJ

“When we approach history, we are dealing with a conglomeration of irrational continua. Those who deal with history by nonrational processes are the ones who make history, the actors in it.”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Source: The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979), Chapter 4, Historical Analysis, p. 99

“These are the materials for reflection which history affords to those who choose to make use of them.”

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Plutarch 251

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