“Better is an handful with quietness, than both the hands full with travail and vexation of spirit.”
Ecclesiastes, 1611 · Hebrew wisdom literature, King James Version
Chapter 4
On Ambition and Its Limits
“The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding.”
Ecclesiastes, 1611 · Hebrew wisdom literature, King James Version
“Why do we complain of Nature? She has dealt kindly with us. Life is long enough, if you know how to use it.”
Seneca, c. 49 AD · Roman Stoic, writing to Paulinus, the keeper of Rome's grain supply
“We do not receive a short life, but we make it a short one, and we are not poor in days, but wasteful of them.”
Seneca, c. 49 AD · Roman Stoic, writing to Paulinus, the keeper of Rome's grain supply
“No one values time: they give it much more freely, as though it cost nothing.”
Seneca, c. 49 AD · Roman Stoic, writing to Paulinus, the keeper of Rome's grain supply
“Lost time is never found again; and what we call time enough, always proves little enough.”
Benjamin Franklin, 1758 · American printer, writing as Poor Richard
The World Health Organization defines burn-out as chronic workplace stress that has not been managed, showing up as exhaustion, cynicism about the job, and reduced professional effectiveness.
World Health Organization, 2019 · International Classification of Diseases, Eleventh Revision
A review of thirty-three studies of exhausted hospital staff found that programmes teaching rest, attention and workload change did lift wellbeing and lower burnout, though most treated the person rather than the job.
Catherine Cohen and colleagues, 2023 · University of South Australia, systematic review of workplace wellbeing interventions
A palliative care nurse who sat with the dying recorded their five most common regrets. The second was this: I wish I hadn't worked so hard. Every man she nursed said it.
Bronnie Ware, 2012 · Australian palliative care nurse, from years at bedsides
A Harvard study that has followed the same lives since 1938 keeps reaching one conclusion. Close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep people happy and healthy across a lifetime.
Harvard Study of Adult Development, 2017 · begun 1938 with 268 Harvard sophomores, directed by George Vaillant and Robert Waldinger
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