More is lost my indecision than wrong decision. Indecision is the thief of opportunity. It will steal you blind.
A room without books is like a body without a soul.
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.
Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century:
Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others;
Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected;
Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it;
Refusing to set aside trivial preferences;
Neglecting development and refinement of the mind;
Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.
Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.
In times of war, the law falls silent.
(Silent enim leges inter arma)
Read at every wait; read at all hours; read within leisure; read in times of labor; read as one goes in; read as one goest out. The task of the educated mind is simply put: read to lead.
To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?
Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief.
If we are not ashamed to think it, we should not be ashamed to say it.
For there is but one essential justice which cements society, and one law which establishes this justice. This law is right reason, which is the true rule of all commandments and prohibitions. Whoever neglects this law, whether written or unwritten, is necessarily unjust and wicked.
― On the Laws
Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.
Non nobis solum nati sumus.
(Not for ourselves alone are we born.)
Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to be always a child. If no use is made of the labours of past ages, the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge.
The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn.
For books are more than books, they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives.
The life given us, by nature is short; but the memory of a well-spent life is eternal.
While there's life, there's hope.
The life of the dead is set in the memory of the living.
― Philippics
Politicians are not born; they are excreted.
The face is a picture of the mind with the eyes as its interpreter.
The shifts of fortune test the reliability of friends.
To study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one’s self to die.
The life of the dead is placed on the memories of the living. The love you gave in life keeps people alive beyond their time. Anyone who was given love will always live on in another's heart.
It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment.
I criticize by creation, not by finding fault.
What is morally wrong can never be advantageous, even when it enables you to make some gain that you believe to be to your advantage. The mere act of believing that some wrongful course of action constitutes an advantage is pernicious.
We must not say every mistake is a foolish one.
Life is nothing without friendship.
It is foolish to tear one’s hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness.
A happy life consists in tranquility of mind.
It is a great thing to know your vices.
When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men's [children's] minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind.
I am not ashamed to confess I am ignorant of what I do not know.
Our span of life is brief, but is long enough for us to live well and honestly.
Your enemies can kill you, but only your friends can hurt you.
Freedom is participation in power.
Law applied to its extreme is the greatest injustice.
― On Duties
Nemo enim est tam senex qui se annum non putet posse vivere.
(No one is so old as to think that he cannot live one more year.)
― On Old Age, On Friendship & On Divination
The man who backbites an absent friend, nay, who does not stand up for him when another blames him, the man who angles for bursts of laughter and for the repute of a wit, who can invent what he never saw, who cannot keep a secret -- that man is black at heart: mark and avoid him.
The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.
Where is there dignity unless there is honesty?
The enemy is within the gates; it is with our own luxury, our own folly, our own criminality that we have to contend.
Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error.
Though silence is not necessarily an admission, it is not a denial, either.
Knowledge which is divorced from justice may be called cunning rather than wisdom.
Never injure a friend, even in jest.
God's law is 'right reason.' When perfectly understood it is called 'wisdom.' When applied by government in regulating human relations it is called 'justice.
Nemo est qui tibi sapientius suadere possit te ipso: numquam labere, si te audies.
(Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself: if you heed yourself, you'll never go wrong.)
― Selected Letters
Ability without honor is useless.
What one has, one ought to use; and whatever he does, he should do with all his might.
Live as brave men; and if fortune is adverse, front its blows with brave hearts.
To be content with what we possess is the greatest and most secure of riches.
A mind without instruction can no more bear fruit than can a field, however fertile, without cultivation.
What an ugly beast is the ape, and how like us.
It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others and to forget his own.
Time obliterates the fictions of opinion and confirms the decisions of nature.
Diseases of the soul are more dangerous and more numerous than those of the body.
Freedom is a possession of inestimable value.
We are bound by the law, so that we may be free.
We must not only obtain Wisdom: we must enjoy her.
― Selected Works
It is our own evil thoughts which madden us.
Nothing stands out so conspicuously, or remains so firmly fixed in the memory, as something which you have blundered.
Hours and days and months and years go by; the past returns no more, and what is to be we cannot know; but whatever the time gives us in which we live, we should therefore be content.
Men decide far more problems by hate, love, lust, rage, sorrow, joy, hope, fear, illusion or some other inward emotion, than by reality, authority, any legal standard, judicial precedent, or statute.
Few are those who wish to be endowed with virtue rather than to seem so.
To teach is a necessity, to please is a sweetness, to persuade is a victory.
Dogs wait for us faithfully.
As for myself, I can only exhort you to look on Friendship as the most valuable of all human possessions, no other being equally suited to the moral nature of man, or so applicable to every state and circumstance, whether of prosperity or adversity, in which he can possibly be placed. But at the same time I lay it down as a fundamental axiom that true Friendship can only subsist between those who are animated by the strictest principles of honour and virtue. When I say this, I would not be thought to adopt the sentiments of those speculative moralists who pretend that no man can justly be deemed virtuous who is not arrived at that state of absolute perfection which constitutes, according to their ideas, the character of genuine wisdom. This opinion may appear true, perhaps, in theory, but is altogether inapplicable to any useful purpose of society, as it supposes a degree of virtue to which no mortal was ever capable of rising.
Ut conclave sine libris ita corpus sine anima (A room without books is like a body without a soul.)
Nature herself has imprinted on the minds of all the idea of God.
Endless money forms the sinews of war.
I prefer the most unfair peace to the most righteous war.
Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.
Let us assume that entertainment is the sole end of reading; even so I think you would hold that no mental employment is so broadening to the sympathies or so enlightening to the understanding. Other pursuits belong not to all times, all ages, all conditions; but this gives stimulus to our youth and diversion to our old age; this adds a charm to success, and offers a haven of consolation to failure. Through the night-watches, on all our journeyings, and in our hours of ease, it is our unfailing companion.
True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrongdoing by its prohibitions.
― On the Republic / On the Laws
A man of faith is also full of courage.
Trust no one unless you have eaten much salt with him.
He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason.
To be rather than to seem.
The best Armour of Old Age is a well spent life preceding it; a Life employed in the Pursuit of useful Knowledge, in honourable Actions and the Practice of Virtue; in which he who labours to improve himself from his Youth, will in Age reap the happiest Fruits of them; not only because these never leave a Man, not even in the extremest Old Age; but because a Conscience bearing Witness that our Life was well-spent, together with the Remembrance of past good Actions, yields an unspeakable Comfort to the Soul.
Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.
A mental stain can neither be blotted out by the passage of time nor washed away by any waters.
History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life and brings us tidings of antiquities.
Everyone has the obligation to ponder well his own specific traits of character. He must also regulate them adequately and not wonder whether someone else's traits might suit him better. The more definitely his own a man's character is, the better it fits him.
In this statement, my Scipio, I build on your own admirable definition, that there can be no community, properly so called, unless it be regulated by a combination of rights. And by this definition it appears that a multitude of men may be just as tyrannical as a single despot and indeed this is the most odious of all tyrannies, since no monster can be more barbarous than the mob, which assumes the name and mask of the people.
Kindness is stronger than fear.
They who say that we should love our fellow-citizens but not foreigners, destroy the universal brotherhood of mankind, with which benevolence and justice would perish forever.
In a republic this rule ought to be observed: that the majority should not have the predominant power.
― On the Republic / On the Laws
Neither can embellishments of language be found without arrangement and expression of thoughts, nor can thoughts be made to shine without the light of language.
The mind becomes accustomed to things by the habitual sight of them, and neither wonders nor inquires about the reasons for things it sees all the time.
The welfare of the people is the highest law.
Books: our unfailing companions
Here is a man whose life and actions the world has already condemned - yet whose enormous fortune...has already brought him acquittal!
― Selected Works
To make a mistake is only human; to persist in a mistake is idiotic.
There is, I assure you, a medical art for the soul. It is philosophy, whose aid need not be sought, as in bodily diseases, from outside ourselves. We must endeavor with all our resources and all our strength to become capable of doctoring ourselves.
If you would abolish covetousness, you must abolish its mother, profusion.
So it may well be believed that when I found him taking a complete holiday, with a vast supply of books at command, he had the air of indulging in a literary debauch, if the term may be applied to so honorable an occupation.
Thus nature has no love for solitude, and always leans, as it were, on some support; and the sweetest support is found in the most intimate friendship.
Apollo, sacred guard of earth's true core, Whence first came frenzied, wild prophetic word...
If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even before you have started.
For while we are enclosed in these confinements of the body, we perform as a kind of duty the heavy task of necessity; for the soul from heaven has been cast down from its dwelling on high and sunk, as it were, into the earth, a place just the opposite to godlike nature and eternity. But I believe that the immortal gods have sown souls in human bodies so there might exist beings to guard the world and after contemplating the order of heaven, might imitate it by their moderation and steadfastness in life.
― On Old Age, On Friendship & On Divination
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
Lucius Cassius ille quem populus Romanus verissimum et sapientissimum iudicem putabat identidem in causis quaerere solebat 'cui bono' fuisset.
The famous Lucius Cassius, whom the Roman people used to regard as a very honest and wise judge, was in the habit of asking, time and again, 'To whose benefit?
Two distinctive traits especially identify beyond a doubt a strong and dominant character. One trait is contempt for external circumstances, when one is convinced that men ought to respect, to desire, and to pursue only what is moral and right, that men should be subject to nothing, not to another man, not to some disturbing passion, not to Fortune.
The second trait, when your character has the disposition I outlined just now, is to perform the kind of services that are significant and most beneficial; but they should also be services that are a severe challenge, that are filled with ordeals, and that endanger not only your life but also the many comforts that make life attractive.Of these two traits, all the glory, magnificence, and the advantage, too, let us not forget, are in the second, while the drive and the discipline that make men great are in the former.
Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends.
I have always been of the opinion that unpopularity earned by doing what is right is not unpopularity at all, but glory.
I would rather be wrong, by God, with Plato than be correct with those men.
When I notice how carefully arranged his hair is and when I watch him adjusting the parting with one finger, I cannot imagine that this man could conceive of such a wicked thing as to destroy the Roman constitution.
What can be more delightful than to have some one to whom you can say everything with the same absolute confidence as to yourself? Is not prosperity robbed of half its value if you have no one to share your joy?
― Treatises on Friendship and Old Age
No power on earth, if it labours beneath the burden of fear, can possibly be strong enough to survive.
― On Duties
Let arms give place to the robe, and the laurel of the warriors yield to the tongue of the orator.
Since it's clear then that what sets itself in motion is eternal, who could fail to attribute such a nature to the soul. Anything set in motion by external impetus is inanimate; what is animate moves by its own interior impulse. This is the nature and power of soul. And because it is the one thing out of all that sets itself in motion, then surely it was never born and will last forever.
― On Living and Dying Well
The countenance is the portrait of the soul, and the eyes mark its intention.
For he (Cato) gives his opinion as if he were in Plato's Republic, not in Romulus' cesspool.
I conclude, then, that the plea of having acted in the interests of a friend is not a valid excuse for a wrong action. . . . We may then lay down this rule of friendship--neither ask nor consent to do what is wrong. For the plea for friendship's sake is a discreditable one, and not to be admitted for a moment.
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
What is sweeter than lettered ease?
Those wars are unjust which are undertaken without provocation. For only a war waged for revenge or defense can be just.
Freedom will bite back more fiercely when suspended than when she remains undisturbed.
― On Duties
Just as apples when unripe are torn from trees, but when ripe and mellow drop down, so it is violence that takes life from young men, ripeness from old. This ripeness is so delightful to me that, as I approach nearer to death, I seem, as it were, to be sighting land, and to be coming to port at last after a long voyage.
― Treatises on Friendship and Old Age
What can be more delightful than to have some one to whom you can say everything with the same absolute confidence as to yourself?
― Treatises on Friendship and Old Age
Esse quam videri - To be, rather than to seem (to be)
When you are aspiring to the highest place, it is honorable to reach the second or even the third rank.
I cannot find a faithful message-bearer, he wrote to his friend, the scholar Atticus. How few are they who are able to carry a rather weighty letter without lightening it by reading.
Silence is one of the great arts of conversation.
My dear Scipio and Laelius. Men, of course, who have no resources in themselves for securing a good and happy life find every age burdensome. But those who look for all happiness from within can never think anything bad which Nature makes inevitable.
He must protect the lives and interests of the people, appeal to his fellow citizens' patriotic interests, and, in general, set the welfare of the community above his own.
I have the better right to indulgence herein, because my devotion to letters strengthens my oratorical powers, and these, such as they are, have never failed my friends in their hour of peril. Yet insignificant though these powers may seem to be, I fully realize from what source I draw all that is highest in them. Had I not persuaded myself from my youth up, thanks to the moral lessons derived from a wide reading, that nothing is to be greatly sought after in this life save glory and honour, and that in their quest all bodily pains and all dangers of death or exile should be lightly accounted, I should never have borne for the safety of you all the burnt of many a bitter encounter, or bared my breast to the daily onsets of abandoned persons. All literature, all philosophy, all history, abounds with incentives to noble action, incentives which would be buried in black darkness were the light of the written word not flashed upon them.
Those who lack within themselves the means for living a blessed and happy life will find any age painful.
― How to grow old: ancient wisdom for the second half of life.
Wisdom is the only thing which can banish sorrow from the breast.
A certain Spartan, whose name hasn’t even been passed down, despised death so greatly that when he was being led to execution after his condemnation by the ephors, he maintained a relaxed and joyous expression. To an enemy’s challenge – ‘Is this how you mock the laws of Lycurgus?’ – he answered, ‘On the contrary, I give great thanks to him, for he decreed a punishment that I can pay without taking out a loan or juggling debts.’101 O worthy man of Sparta! His spirit was so great that it seems he must have been an innocent man condemned to die. There have been many such in our own country.
― On Living and Dying Well
What is dishonorably got, is dishonorably squandered.
What sweetness is left in life, if you take away friendship? Robbing life of friendship is like robbing the world of the sun. A true friend is more to be esteemed than kinsfolk.
There are no snares more dangerous than those which lurk under the guise of duty or the name of relationship.
The fruit of too much liberty is slavery.