What advice would Julius Caesar give about success and hard work?

Caesar tells you this. Hard work is not a virtue — it is a precondition. The slave works hard; the ox works hard; the legionary on the march from Genava to the lands of the Helvetii works hard. None of them is great. What separates the man who builds an empire from the man who merely tires himself is the directing intelligence, the willingness to choose the difficult thing on purpose and execute it before the hour is gone.

When Caesar was sent to govern Hispania Ulterior as a young praetor, he wept before the statue of Alexander at Gades — because Alexander at the age I had then reached had conquered the world, and Caesar had conquered nothing. That hour was the turn. From that hour Caesar wasted no day, no campaign, no winter. While my colleagues in the Senate composed elegant speeches in the porticoes of Rome, Caesar reduced Gaul tribe by tribe — three hundred peoples, eight hundred cities, sixty pitched battles, all of it concluded in eight years.

The lesson is this. Decide what you intend. Reduce the thing into its parts. Move on the first part today, before the meal, before the bath, before the visitor. The Romans of old said festina lente — make haste slowly. That is the formula. Speed without panic. Patience without delay. The slow river cuts the canyon; the rushing torrent merely floods the bank and runs out.

And one further matter. The fortune you require — and you will require it — comes only to the man already in motion. Fortune is a woman, the proverb says, and she favors the bold. Caesar crossed the Rubicon because Caesar had already calculated the crossing. Boldness without preparation is suicide. Preparation without boldness is bureaucracy. The conjunction of the two is empire.