Saint Augustine is primarily a guidebook to common sense and therefore more needed today than ever before in our history. I liked this:
He was not utterly unskilled in handling his own lack of training, and he refused to be rashly drawn into a controversy about those matters from which there would be no exit nor easy way of retreat. This was an additional ground for my pleasure. For the controlled modesty of a mind that admits limitations is more beautiful than the things I was anxious to know about. (V.12)
In business, I have learned to say yes, then learn how to do what I’d promised. Very rarely have I been caught up in an impossibility after I’d sworn to success. But this strategy doesn’t work well in discussions and I must learn to override my tendency to act or speak up, knowing that belief does not equal knowledge, desire does not equal accomplished.
I will remember this the next time I get the urge to write a poem.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology