Of what use are pedigrees, or to be thought of noble blood, or the display of family portraits, O Ponticus?
When the mischief is done the door is shut.
Those things please more, which are more expensive.
There is no reliance to be placed on appearance.
The only gain from the friendship of the great is a fine dinner.
They whose sole bliss is eating can give but that one brutish reason why they live.
Ask for a valiant heart which has banished the fear of death, which looks upon the length of days as one of the least of nature’s gifts; which is able to suffer every kind of hardship, is proof against anger, craves for nothing, and reckons the trials and gruelling labours of Hercules as more desirable blessings than the amorous ease and the banquets and cushions of Sardanapallus. The things that I recommend you can grant to yourself.
When Alexander The Great was alive the world was not big enough to contain his ambition but while Alexander chafed at the confines of the world in life, in death, “a coffin was enough.
Would you not like to fill up a whole note-book at the street crossings when you see a forger borne along upon the necks of six porters, and exposed to view on this side and on that in his almost naked litter, and reminding you of the lounging Maecenas: one who by help of a scrap of paper and a moistened seal has converted himself into a fine and wealthy gentleman?
It is a poor thing to lean upon the fame of others, lest the pillars give way and the house fall down in ruin.
So Nature ordains; no evil example corrupts us so soon and so rapidly as one that has been set at home, since it comes into the mind on high authority.
Is it a simple form of madness to lose a hundred thousand sesterces, and not have a shirt to give to a shivering slave?
For no deity is held in such reverence amongst us as Wealth; though as yet, O baneful money, thou hast no temple of thine own; not yet have we reared altars to Money in like manner as we worship Peace and Honour, Victory and Virtue.
Benign Philosophy, by degrees, strips from us most of our vices, and all our mistakes; it is she that first teaches us the right.
Many a man has met death from the rushing flood of his own eloquence; others from the strength and wondrous thews in which they have trusted.
Had we but wisdom, thou wouldst have no Divinity, O Fortune: it is we that make thee into a Goddess!
The world was not big enough for Alexander the Great, but a coffin was.
Who will watch the watchers?
If nature’s inspiration fails, indignation will beget the poem.
We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learned to bear its ills, without being overcome by them.
Mens Sana In Corpore Sano.