One Last Chance to Reclaim a Valued Employee

Leigh Branham writes in The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave, There are times during an exit interview when it may become obvious that an employee who has decided to leave is really heartbroken at the prospect of leaving, but feels there is no alternative. For example, an employee may love the job, the work environment, […]

Selfless Gratitude

Phillip Moffitt writes in his essay Selfless Gratitude, Gratitude is the sweetest of all the practices for daily life and the most easily cultivated, requiring the least sacrifice for what is gained in return. It is a very powerful form of mindfulness practice, particularly for those who have depressive or self-defeating feelings, and those with […]

Patience is a Virtue for Investors

From Apollo Asia Fund’s manager’s report for second quarter 2017: We are patient with companies which are having short-term difficulties—perhaps to a fault, but when managers respond to each setback with sensible steps, the results are usually good in the end, and we sometimes learn more about the business characteristics during such periods. When our […]

Learn, Learn, Learn

Charlie Munger at the Berkshire Hathaway 2017 Annual Shareholders Meeting (47:48–48:35 of this Yahoo! Livestream🙂 I think that a life properly lived is just learn, learn, learn all the time. And I think Berkshire’s gained enormously from these investment decisions by learning, through a long, long period. Every time you appoint a new person that’s […]

Aeschylus Transformed Tragedy to the Great Heights of Poetry and Theatrical Power

English literary scholar Maurice Bowra writes about the ancient Greek tragedian Aeschylus, “the father of tragedy,” in Landmarks in Greek Literature, Aeschylus may have found some of his starting-points in contemporary events but he looked far beyond them to the lasting principles which they illustrated and which could best be presented in a mythical form […]

The Greatness of Walt Whitman

American literary scholar and critic R. W. B. Lewis writes about the genius of Walt Whitman in Major Writers of America: He was the poet of the self’s motion downwards into the abysses of darkness and guilt and pain and isolation, upwards to the creative act in which darkness was transmuted into beauty. When the […]

Mao Zedong Glorifies Lu Xun

Lu Xun was a leading and influential figure in modern Chinese literature. A pioneer in the May Fourth Movement-inspired new literature of the early 1900s, he specialized in the short story, endowing this genre with new form and content. Chairman Mao Zedong in The Culture of New Democracy, Lu Xun was the major leader in […]

The Contented Slave

American abolitionist and writer Frederick Douglass in his 1845 memoir Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, I have observed this in my experience of slavery, that whenever my condition was improved, instead of its increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire to be free, and set me to thinking of plans to gain […]

Wishing Others Well

Cyndi Lee writes in May I Be Happy, When we really see, in our mind’s eye, a person we think we don’t like, and instead of solidifying our reasons for hatred we honestly wish them happiness, good health, safety, and as easeful life, we start to forget what we thought we hated and why we […]

Pragmatic Framework

Patricia Anderson writes in Real or Pretend: A Personal Account article in the Spring 1999 issue of The Tricycle magazine: I became enamored of Buddhism when I realized its basic tenet began by saying, essentially, “Life sucks and then you die, so what’s that all about?” This was the religion for me. This was a […]