Cicero - food for thought

The Six Mistakes of Humans, from Cicero (106-43 BC):
1. The illusion that personal gain is made up of crushing others;
2. The tendency to worry about things that cannot be changed or corrected;
3. Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it;
4. Refusing to set aside trivial preferences;
5. Neglecting development and refinement of the mind, and not acquiring the habit of reading and study;
6. Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.

From Mark Nepo's Facing the Lion, Being the Lion: Finding Inner Courage Where It Lives:
All these attributes replace a larger view with a smaller one. All make opaque what is clear. All reduce instead of enlarge. All heighten our isolation over our common humanity. The fact is that we can trace each of Cicero's "mistakes" to choices that are made, consciously or not, along the way. All represent habits of thinking by which we forget that we are just a small part of something larger. As we describe these shifts, it's helpful to take a personal inventory to see if and where these choices have interefered with our compassion and vitality, and ultimately, our courage... For there are some of Cicero's mistakes that I trip into all the time, and others (like crushing others and compelling others to live as I do) that I don't want to believe I am capable of. ISBN 978-1-57324-315-5, pp. 54-55.

respectfully taken from friendly circle - a Cincinnati Quaker blog