First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end.
Myth is an attempt to narrate a whole human experience, of which the purpose is too deep, going too deep in the blood and soul, for mental explanation or description.
The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life - knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.
Even here in America, we felt the cool, refreshing breeze of freedom when Nelson Mandela took the seat of Presidency in his country where formerly he was not even allowed to vote. We were enlarged by tears of pride as we saw Nelson Mandela's former prison guards invited, courteously, by him to watch from the front rows his inauguration.
Buddha was speaking in a village square one day, when one of the inhabitants started to abuse him. Buddha paused and said to the man, "If you offer me a piece of paper and I refuse to accept it, what happens to the paper?" "Why, it stays with me, of course," the villager replied. Buddha smiled gently, "And that is exactly what I am doing with your abuse," he said. "I am not accepting it, therefore it stays with you."
I know that it is likely that as worship of the gods declines, faith between men and all human society will disappear, as well as that most excellent of all virtues, which is justice.
Scholarship has the same relationship to wisdom as righteousness has to holiness: it is cold and dry, it is loveless and knows nodeep feelings of inadequacy or longing.