I shall always consider the best guesser the best prophet.
Nothing is so secure as that money will not defeat it.
A bachelor’s bed is the most pleasant.
Never can custom conquer nature, for she is ever unconquered.
Should this my firm persuasion of the soul’s immortality prove to be a mere delusion, it is at least a pleasing delusion, and I will cherish it to my last breath.
The greatest incitement to guilt is the hope of sinning with impunity.
History is the witness of the times, the light of truth, the life of memory, the teacher of life, the messenger of antiquity.
There is a difference between justice and consideration in one’s relations to one’s fellow men. It is the function of justice not to do wrong to one’s fellow men of considerateness, not to wound their feelings.
Law applied to its extreme is the greatest injustice.
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.
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?
No power on earth, if it labours beneath the burden of fear, can possibly be strong enough to survive.
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.
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.
What can be more delightful than to have some one to whom you can say everything with the same absolute confidence as to yourself?
We must stand up against old age and make up for its drawbacks by taking pains. We must fight it as we should an illness. We must look after our health, use moderate exercise, take just enough food and drink to recruit, but not to overload, our strength. Nor is it the body alone that must be supported, but the intellect and soul much more.
There is also a tradition about Socrates. He liked walking, it is recorded, until a late hour of the evening, and when someone asked him why he did this he said he was trying to work up an appetite for his dinner.
For as I like a man in whom there is something of the old, so I like a man in whom there is something of the young; and he who follows this maxim, in body will possibly be an old man but he will never be an old man in mind.
O, tempora! O, mores!