In these times the following Gentiles flourished: Seneca, Persius, Juvenal, and Quintilian. Some of their moral sayings are set down here.
Seneca says in the book On Morals:
Uncertain death overtakes many who postpone life. Therefore every day should be ordered as though it were the last.
Words must be judged by things, not by persons. Consider yourself an orator if you have first persuaded yourself, before everyone else, of what is proper.
Senile avarice is like a monster. What is more foolish than increasing one’s provisions when the road is ending?
Keep peace with people and wage war against vices.
Every passion has this quality: whatever madness it suffers itself, it thinks everyone suffers the same.
The same author says in the book On the Four Virtues:
He who desires to follow prudence lives rightly when he first weighs everything and establishes the worth of things not from the opinion of the multitude but from their nature.
It belongs to the prudent man to examine plans and not to fall suddenly into falsehood through easy credulity.
Do not admit wandering thoughts resembling dreams. If you delight your mind with them, after arranging everything in imagination you will remain sad.
Praise sparingly and blame sparingly. The former is suspect as flattery, the latter as malice.
The prudent man never withers in idleness. He sometimes keeps his mind relaxed, but never unrestrained.
He hastens what is slow, disentangles what is perplexed, softens what is hard, smooths what is rough, levels what is steep, and judges great things from small, obscure things from evident, and remote things from nearby.
[Running head: Sixth Title.]
Do not be moved by the authority of the speaker; attend not to who speaks but to what is said. Think not how many people you please, but whom you please.
Know that forgiveness is a great and honorable kind of vengeance.
You will be magnanimous if you neither seek dangers like a rash man nor fear them like a coward.
Let your sustenance be easily obtained. Approach food not for pleasure but for nourishment; let hunger, not flavors, excite your palate.
Redeem your desires at small cost. You need take care of this alone: that they come to an end.
Let neither poverty be unclean in you, nor thrift sordid, nor simplicity neglected, nor gentleness languid.
Neither lament your own possessions nor marvel at another’s.
Love useful speech more than witty speech.
Laughter is blameworthy if it is excessive, poured forth childishly, or broken with womanish affectation. Laughter makes a person hateful if it is proud, loud, malicious and secretive, or provoked by the misfortunes of others.
Do not be buffoonish, but practice pleasing courtesy. Let your wit be without a tooth, your jokes without baseness, your laughter without guffawing, your voice without shouting, your walk without commotion, and your repose without idleness.
While others play, occupy yourself with some useful and honorable deed. Let it be as grievous to you to be praised by shameful people as to be praised for shameful acts.
The most difficult kind of self-restraint is to repel the affirmations of flatterers, whose words relax the mind with a certain pleasure.
Do not be an inquisitive investigator of others’ vices, a bitter reprover, or one who corrects with reproach. Instead, anticipate admonition with generosity.
Be a silent listener to one who speaks, answer readily one who asks, and yield readily to one who contends.
You will make everyone equal to you if you neither proudly despise your inferiors nor fear your superiors while living uprightly.
Be kind to all, flattering to no one, familiar with a few, and fair to everyone.
Be more severe in judgment than in speech and in life than in countenance. Neither sow reports of your own good reputation nor envy another’s.
Share without arrogance what you know with one who asks. What you do not know, ask to be taught without concealing your ignorance.
The same author says in the book On Clemency:
The ruler’s very clemency produces shame at sinning, and the penalty imposed by a gentle man seems much heavier. Many punishments are no less shameful for a ruler than many wounds for a physician. Obedience is better under a milder command.
Clemency is moderation of the mind when one has the power to take vengeance, or the superior’s mildness toward an inferior in establishing penalties.
The same author says in the book On Benefits:
No one can be grateful to a person who adds a benefit arrogantly, casts it forth in anger, or yields it from weariness merely to be rid of annoyance.
Those who gladly receive must be taught to repay gladly and to surpass—not merely equal in deed and spirit—those to whom they are obligated.
A benefit is a benevolent action that bestows joy and takes joy in bestowing. It is inclined and spontaneously ready to do what it does. Thus what is given does not matter so much as the spirit in which it is given.
Sometimes the man who magnificently gave a little binds us more because he equaled the riches of kings in spirit: he gave little, but gladly.
The most pleasing benefits are those that are ready and meet us on the way, where no delay intervenes except the recipient’s modesty.
For the most serious men, nothing costs more dearly than what is bought with entreaties. “I ask” is an irksome and burdensome phrase that must be spoken with downcast face.
All kindness hastens, and it belongs to one who gives gladly to give quickly.
Sometimes even the person who is helped should be deceived, so that he may possess the benefit without knowing from whom he received it.
This is the law of a benefit between two people: the one ought immediately to forget what he gave, the other to remember what he received. Let the giver of the benefit be silent; let the recipient tell of it.
He is ungrateful who gives thanks only when witnesses have been removed.
He who gives a benefit imitates God; he who demands its return is a moneylender.
A multitude of sinners removes shame.
It is kingship to refuse to reign when you could.
It is easier to rule barbarous nations that cannot endure another’s judgment than to restrain your own mind and hand it over to yourself—that is, to possess mastery of yourself.
The ages have set no one so high that he does not lack a friend all the more as he lacks nothing else.
Pleasure is fragile and brief, wearied by the very enjoyment of itself the more greedily it is drained. One must immediately either repent of it or be ashamed.
The same author says in the book On Remedies for Chance Events:
It is foolish to fear what you cannot avoid. It is best to die when it pleases you to live.
Many accompany someone; and flies accompany me; wolves, corpses; ants, grain. That crowd follows prey, not the man.
One must understand that blindness is part of innocence. The eyes are incitements to vice and leaders of crimes.
You have suffered shipwreck: think not of what you lost, but of the fact that you escaped.
Seek a friend among upright and honorable duties.
The same author says in the book Natural Questions:
Among no people should freedom be equal more than among philosophers.
Who does not understand that all things lose their force through familiarity?
Strength comes to the human soul from good arts and from the contemplation of nature.
Why should I tremble at a man, an arrow, a beast, or a spear? Greater dangers await me from thunderbolts and the great parts of nature.
Human life is a small thing, but contempt for life is a great thing.
We are so constituted by nature that everyday things pass us by even when they are worthy of admiration, while even the smallest things become a delightful spectacle if they appear unusually.
Despise death, and all things that lead to death are despised. Whether wars, shipwrecks, or weights of threats/mines [read: weights of collapsing ruins], can they do anything more than violently separate the body from the soul? No diligence avoids this, no happiness grants exemption from it, and no power overcomes it.
O demented man, forgetful of your frailty! If you fear death only when it thunders, will you live if you escape the thunderbolt? The sword will seek you, the stone will seek you, and bile will seek you.
Whatever happens to you, bear it as though you had wished it to happen. You ought to have wished it if you had known that all things happen by God’s decrees. To weep, complain, and groan is to cease [read: is to revolt].
The same author says:
Nothing is as deadly to talent as luxury. The talents of idle youth grow torpid, while people remain awake with no less labor over an honorable pursuit [read: nor is there wakefulness in the labor of even one honorable undertaking].
Passions for singing, dancing, and obscenity hold the effeminate. Curling the hair, thinning the voice for womanly blandishments, vying with women in softness of body, and adorning oneself with the foulest refinements are the model of our young men.
Soft and enervated, they remain amid vice, investigators of another’s chastity while neglecting their own.
The same author says in the tragedies:
The more you are able to do, the more you should bear patiently.
Violent commands do not endure long; moderate ones last.
He who does not forbid sin when he can commands it.
Morals, law, piety, and faith perish; and shame, once it has perished, does not know how to return.
Alas, what a sweet evil the dreadful love of life adds to mortals.
He who repents of sinning is almost innocent.
O how wretched it is not to know how to die.
Let him readily pardon who himself needs pardon.
Virtue is the one thing that can grant immortality and make men equal to gods.
The same author says in the letters to Lucilius.
In the first letter:
Claim yourself for yourself; gather and preserve the time that until now was carried away, fell from you, or was stolen. The most shameful loss is that which occurs through negligence.
Whom will you give me who places any value upon time, who esteems a day, and who understands that he is dying daily? In this we are all deceived: we look ahead to death, although a great part of it has already passed. Whatever portion of our life lies behind us, death possesses.
While life is postponed, it passes by. All other things belong to others; time alone is ours. Nature has sent us into possession of this one fleeting and slippery thing.
[Running head: Chapter Twenty-Four, Folio 205.]
I judge the first proof of a composed mind to be its ability to stand still and remain with itself.
See to it that reading many authors and volumes of every kind does not possess something wandering and unstable. You ought to linger upon and depend upon definite minds.
Food that is discharged as soon as it is eaten neither benefits nor nourishes the body. Nothing is so useful that it can profit in passing. Nothing impedes health as much as frequent changes of remedies. Thus a multitude of books distracts. Since you cannot read as much as you possess, it is enough to possess as much as you can read. Tasting many things belongs to a disdainful stomach.
In the third letter:
If you consider anyone a friend but do not trust him as much as yourself, you err greatly. The man who seeks a friend in the entrance hall and tests him at the banquet also errs.
A busy man besieged by his possessions has no greater evil than that he regards as friends men whose friend he himself is not.
Deliberate about everything with your friend, but first deliberate about the friend himself. After friendship one must trust; before friendship one must judge.
Speak as boldly with your friend as with yourself. Live in such a way that you entrust nothing to yourself that you could not also entrust to an enemy.
Both trusting everyone and trusting no one are faults. I would call the former the more honorable fault, the latter the safer.
Thus rebuke both those who are always restless and those who always rest. Delight in commotion is not industry but the thrashing of an agitated mind. To regard every movement as troublesome is not repose but dissolution and languor. Therefore these things must be mingled: the man at rest must act, and the man acting must rest.
In the fourth letter:
Not childhood but, what is more serious, childishness still remains in us. This is all the worse because we possess the authority of old men but the faults of boys—and not only of boys, but of infants. Boys fear trifles; infants fear false things; we fear both.
Most men wretchedly fluctuate between the fear of death and the torments of life: they do not wish to live and do not know how to die.
Make life pleasant for yourself by laying aside every anxiety about it. No good helps its possessor unless his mind is prepared for its loss. Therefore exhort and harden yourself against everything that can happen.
In the fifth letter:
Just as desiring luxurious things is a mark of extravagance, so it is madness to flee ordinary things that can be obtained at no great price. Philosophy demands frugality, not punishment. Let life be moderated between good morals and public customs.
Let whoever enters our house admire us rather than our furnishings. He is great who uses earthenware as though it were silver, and he is no less great who uses silver as though it were earthenware.
Catho [read: Hecato] says: “You will cease to fear if you cease to hope.” Wild animals flee the dangers they see, and when they escape them they are secure. We, however, are tormented by what is coming and by what is past. Memory recalls the torment of fear, and foresight anticipates it. Yet no one is wretched only because of present things.
In the sixth letter:
This itself is proof that a mind has been changed for the better: it sees its faults, which it previously did not know.
No good possession is pleasant without a companion. The living voice and shared life will profit you more than a speech. First you must come into the presence of the thing itself, because people trust their eyes more than their ears. The journey by precepts is long; by examples it is short and effective.
In the seventh letter:
Association with many people is hostile, and the larger the crowd with which we mingle, the greater this danger becomes. I return more avaricious, ambitious, luxurious, even crueler and less humane, because I have been among people.
Both things must be avoided: do not become like the evil because they are many, and do not become hostile to the many because they are unlike you.
Withdraw into yourself as much as you can. Associate with those who will make you better; admit those whom you can make better. These things happen mutually: people learn while they teach.
In the eighth letter:
Avoid whatever pleases the crowd. Stand suspicious and fearful before every accidental good, for a beast and a fish are deceived by some hope of pleasure. You think these things the gifts of fortune; they are traps. Whoever wishes to live a safe life should avoid these baited benefits.
Know that a man is covered as well with thatch as with gold. Think that nothing besides the soul is marvelous; to the great soul nothing is small.
Believe me: those who seem to do nothing perform greater deeds; they deal with human and divine things together.
In the ninth letter:
He who was adopted for the sake of usefulness will be pleasing only as long as he is useful. For this reason crowds of friends surround the prosperous, while solitude surrounds the fallen. Friends flee precisely where they are tested.
The beginnings and ends of things must agree with one another. What looks toward advantage is a business transaction, not friendship.
Chrysippus says that the wise man lacks nothing, though he needs many things. In contrast, the fool needs nothing, for he knows how to use nothing.
What does it matter what your condition is if it seems bad to you? When [read: Except to] the wise man his own things are not pleasing; all folly labors in disgust with itself.
In the tenth letter:
I find no one with whom I would prefer you to be than with yourself. Flee the multitude, flee the few, flee even one person.
Live with people as though God were watching. Speak with God as though people were listening.
In the eleventh letter:
Modesty in a young man is a good sign. A great part of sin is removed if a witness stands beside sinners.
O happy is he who can so revere someone that he composes and orders himself even at the memory of him. He who so reveres someone will soon be modest [read: will soon be worthy of reverence].
Choose, therefore, a person whose life and speech please you. Always show him to yourself either as guardian or example, for we need someone according to whom our character may raise itself. Unless measured against a rule, you will not correct what is crooked.
In the twelfth letter:
Fruits are most pleasing as they pass away. He is most blessed and secure in the possession of himself who awaits tomorrow without anxiety.
In the thirteenth letter:
An athlete who has never been bruised cannot bring great spirit to a contest. The man who has seen his own blood, whose teeth have cracked beneath a fist, who, when thrown down, did not throw away his courage but rose more defiantly whenever he fell—such a man descends to the fight with great hope. Virtue gains greatly when provoked.
More things frighten us than oppress us, and we suffer more often from opinion than from reality. I command you not to be wretched before the time, since the things you have feared as imminent perhaps will never come; certainly they have not yet come.
Some things torment us more than they should, some before they should, and some when they should not at all. Thus we either enlarge pain, flee it, or anticipate it because many expected things never appear.
Even if what you fear will happen, what good does it do to run out to meet your grief? You will suffer soon enough when it arrives. Nothing is so certain among the things feared that it is not still more certain both that feared things will subside and hoped-for things will deceive.
[Running head: Sixth Title.]
In the fourteenth letter:
What is more shameful than an old man beginning to live? He who serves the body serves many masters: he who fears too much for it and refers everything to it.
We ought to act not as though we should live for the body, but as though we cannot live without it. Excessive love of it disturbs us with fears, burdens us with anxieties, and exposes us to insults. What is honorable is cheap to the man to whom the body is too dear.
Let care of the body be exercised most diligently, yet in such a way that when reason, dignity, or fidelity demands it, the body must be sent even into the fire.
Even on a road beset by danger, the poor man has peace.
Wickedness never grows so strong and never so conspires against the virtues that the name of philosophy does not remain venerable and sacred.
No one enjoys a good thing anxiously.
The rich man strives to add something to his riches. While thinking of an increase, he forgets their use. He receives accounts, wears out the forum, and from a master becomes a steward.
In the fifteenth letter:
Whatever you do, return quickly from the body to the soul. Exercise it by day and night. Care for that good which grows better with age.
How pleasant it is to ask for nothing; how magnificent to be full and not depend upon fortune.
Those treacherous goods sometimes depart, better to those who hope for them than to those who have obtained them. If there were anything solid in them, they would sometimes satisfy; instead, they arouse the thirst of those who drink.
In the sixteenth letter:
There is more work in keeping honorable resolutions than in making them. One must persevere and add strength by continual study until what is a good will becomes a good mind.
Natural desires are limited. Those born from false opinion have no place where they end.
Withdraw yourself from vanities. When you wish to know whether what you seek has a natural desire or blind cupidity, consider whether it can stop anywhere. If after a long advance something always remains, know that it is not natural.
In the seventeenth letter:
Cast all those things away if you are wise—or rather, that you may become wise, strive toward a good mind at full speed and with all your strength. If there is anything by which you are held, either free yourself or cut it off.
Riches hinder many from philosophizing; poverty is unencumbered and secure. No crowd of servants surrounds it, whose feeding requires one to pray for the fertility of overseas regions.
It is easy to feed a few well-trained stomachs that desire nothing except to be filled. Hunger costs little; disgust costs much. Poverty is content to satisfy present desires.
In the eighteenth letter:
Water, porridge, or a crust of barley bread is not a pleasant thing. Yet the highest pleasure is to be able to take pleasure even in these and to have reduced oneself to that which no injustice of fortune can snatch away.
I do not forbid you the possession of riches, but I wish to bring it about that you possess them without fear. You will attain this in only one way: if you persuade yourself that you will live happily without them and regard them as always about to depart.
In the twentieth letter:
Philosophy teaches acting, not speaking, and demands that each person live according to its law, so that life does not disagree with speech and a single life has one color without any discord among its actions.
The greatest duty and proof of wisdom is that deeds agree with words and that a person be everywhere equal to and the same as himself.
What is wisdom? Always to will the same and refuse the same. You need not add the little qualification that what you will must be right, for the same thing cannot always please anyone unless it is right.
The judgment of people changes daily, turns into its opposite, and for most life is conducted as a game.
What you cannot know through your own prosperity, you will know through poverty, for it will retain true and certain friends. Whoever departs was following not you but something else.
Should poverty not be loved for this reason alone, because it shows by whom you are loved?
O when will that day come on which no one lies in your honor? Therefore let your thoughts tend here; care for this, wish for this: reduce yourself to little things from which you cannot fall.
It is impossible to despise riches placed in one’s lap. That man possesses a mighty spirit who, when riches have surrounded him, marvels long and much that they came to him, laughs, and hears that they are his more than he feels it. It is a great thing not to be corrupted by association with riches.
In the twenty-second letter:
Untie what you have badly entangled rather than tear it apart. Provided there is no other way of untying it, even tear it apart.
No one is so timid that he would rather hang forever than fall once.
It is shameful to yield to a burden; struggle with the duty you once accepted. He who flees labor is not a brave and energetic man, for his spirit also grows through it.
By the very difficulty of things we die worse than we were born. This is our fault, not nature’s.
No one cares how well he lives, but how long. Yet it can happen to all people that they live well, to no one that he live long.
In the twenty-third letter:
The foundation of a good mind is not to rejoice in vanities. Believe me, true joy is a serious matter.
Do you think anyone can with a relaxed countenance and cheerful eye despise death, open his home to poverty, hold pleasures under restraint, and meditate upon the endurance of sufferings? He who turns these things over within himself possesses great but not very alluring joy.
The things in which the crowd delights possess a thin and superficial pleasure, and whatever joy has been contrived lacks a foundation.
Regard the little body, even though nothing can be done without it, as a necessary thing rather than a great one. It supplies vain pleasures soon to be regretted, and unless they are restrained with great moderation, they will turn into their opposites.
Pleasure stands on a precipice and inclines toward pain unless it maintains a limit. Yet it is difficult to preserve a limit in what you have believed to be good.
The good man’s eagerness is safe when it arises from a good conscience, honorable counsels, and contempt for chance events.
Few people govern themselves and their affairs by counsel. The rest, like those who swim in rivers, do not go but are carried. Some begin to live only when life must end.
From the twenty-fourth letter:
Why is it necessary to summon evils? They will have to be feared soon enough when they come. It is foolish to anticipate and lose the present time through fear of the future, because although you are going to be wretched later, you are wretched already.
But I shall lead you to security by another road. If you wish to cast off every anxiety, assume that whatever you fear will happen is certainly going to happen. Whatever that evil is, measure it with yourself and assess your fear.
Courage is more eager to take possession of dangers than cruelty to inflict them. Pain is light if I can endure it; brief if I cannot.
This is the most shameful charge commonly made against us: that we handle the words, not the works, of philosophy.
Pleasures themselves turn into torments. Feasts produce indigestion, drunkenness produces sluggishness and trembling of the nerves, and lust produces deformity of the hands, feet, and joints.
I shall become poor; I shall be among many; I shall become an exile; there I shall think myself born. Where shall I be sent? I shall be bound. For am I now free? Nature has fastened me to this heavy weight of my body.
I shall die: I shall cease to be able to fall ill, to be bound, and to die.
[Running head: Chapter Twenty-Four, Folio 206.]
It is shameful to speak one thing and feel another.
We die daily. Every day some part of life is taken away, and even while we are growing, life decreases.
In the twenty-fifth letter:
As concerns our two friends, different roads must be taken. The faults of one must be corrected, those of the other broken. I shall use complete freedom. I do not love him unless I offend him.
I do not know whether I shall make progress, but I would rather lack success than fidelity.
Shame must be nourished. So long as it endures in the soul, there will be some place for good hope.
Nature desires bread and water. No one is poor with respect to these. Whoever confines his desire within them will contend with Jupiter himself in happiness.
Do everything as though someone were watching. Without doubt it helps to have appointed a guardian over oneself and to have someone whom you may look toward and whom you may judge to be present among your thoughts. Every evil deed is urged by solitude.
When you have advanced so far that you possess reverence even for yourself, you will be permitted to dismiss your tutor.
In the twenty-sixth letter:
What complaint is there, what inconvenience, if whatever ought to end fails? And what departure is better than to dissolve into one’s end as nature releases one?
It is uncertain in what place death awaits you; therefore await it in every place.
He who says he has learned to die is above every power—certainly beyond every power. What are prison, custody, and bolts to him? He has a free door. There is one chain that holds us bound: love of life.
In the twenty-seventh letter:
Count your years, and you will be ashamed to desire the same things that you desired as a boy.
Provide this for yourself near the day of death: let your vices die before you.
A good mind is neither lent nor bought. I think that if it were for sale, it would not find a buyer. Yet an evil mind is bought daily.
In the twenty-eighth letter:
You must change your mind, not the sky. Although you cross the vast sea, your vices follow you wherever you arrive.
You ask why this flight does not help you. You flee with yourself. The soul’s burden must be laid down. No place will please you; indeed, whatever you do, you do against yourself and harm yourself by the very movement, for you contutis [read: shake] a sick man.
But when you have removed that evil, every change of place will be pleasant. What matters more is what sort of person you come as than where you come.
Therefore we should attach the soul to no place but live with this conviction: “My homeland is the whole world.”
What can be more turbulent than the forum? Even there one may live quietly if necessary.
But if one is permitted to arrange oneself, the beginning of health is knowledge of one’s sin. He who does not know that he sins does not wish to be corrected. Therefore accuse yourself as much as you can. Inquire into yourself: perform first the role of accuser, then of judge, and finally of intercessor.
In the thirtieth letter:
Someone comes to death angry at death. No one receives it cheerfully when it comes unless he has long prepared himself for it.
In the thirty-first letter:
Labor nourishes noble souls. It is not manly to fear sweat.
In the thirty-fourth letter:
A great part of goodness is to wish to become good.
In the thirty-sixth letter:
An elderly beginner is a shameful and ridiculous thing. Youth must prepare; old age must employ.
That most tranquil soul has reached perfection which remains in the same condition however events turn out.
The death we fear interrupts life; it does not take it away. A day will come again that restores us to the light. Therefore depart with an even spirit, since you will return.
Observe the circle of things returning into themselves. You will see that nothing in this world is extinguished, but descends and rises again by turns.
In the thirty-seventh letter:
If you wish to subject all things to yourself, subject yourself to reason. You will rule many if reason rules you, and from it you will learn how and what you ought to undertake.
It is shameful not to go but to be carried along, and suddenly, stupefied in the midst of the whirlwind of events, to ask, “How did I come here?”
In the thirty-ninth letter:
A noble soul possesses this excellent quality: it is stirred toward honorable things. The hope of great things calls it to itself and raises it up, for our soul is like a flame in motion, more mobile and active the more vehement it becomes.
But happy is he who directs this impulse toward better things. He will place himself outside fortune’s jurisdiction and power, moderate secure things [read: favorable circumstances/prosperity], lessen adversities, and despise things others admire.
It belongs to a great spirit to despise great things and prefer moderate things to excessive ones. Desire that oversteps its natural measure must advance without limit.
There ceases to be a place for remedy when what were faults have become habits.
In the fortieth letter:
Poverty and meagerness of words make the listener less attentive through weariness with broken slowness. Yet what is awaited enters more easily than what flies past.
A speech that devotes itself to truth ought to be unadorned and simple. Popular speech has no truth; it wishes to move the crowd and seize unreflective ears with force.
Remedies do no good unless they remain in place. What physician treats the sick in passing?
Just as a more measured gait suits a wise man, so does controlled, not audacious, speech. Therefore I command you to speak slowly.
In the forty-first letter:
A sacred spirit sits within us, observer and guardian of our evils and goods. As it has been treated by us, so it treats us.
In the forty-second letter:
Look around at those things that drive us mad and that we lose with many tears. You will know that in them the loss is not troublesome, but the belief that there is a loss. No one feels that they have perished; he only thinks it.
He who possesses himself has lost nothing.
In the forty-third letter:
You will scarcely find anyone who can live with an open door. A good conscience summons a crowd; a bad conscience is anxious and troubled even in solitude.
If what you do is honorable, let everyone know. If shameful, what does it matter that no one knows when you know?
In the forty-fifth letter:
It does not matter how many books you possess, but how good they are. Definite reading profits; varied reading delights.
Vices creep upon us beneath the appearance of virtues. Rashness hides under the title of courage. Moderation is called cowardice, and the cautious man is taken for a coward. In these matters we err at great peril.
In the forty-sixth letter:
When even the cause has been removed, we lie from habit.
In the forty-seventh letter:
I laugh at those who consider it shameful to dine with their own slave. Why, unless because a most arrogant custom has surrounded the dining master with a crowd of standing slaves?
The master loads a stomach distended with enormous greed, while the slaves, fasting and silent throughout the whole night, stand nearby. Thus those who are not permitted to speak in their master’s presence speak about him.
Live with your inferior as you would wish your superior to live with you. As often as it comes to mind how much authority you have over your slave, let it come to mind just as often that your master has as much over you.
How foolish is the man who, when about to buy a horse, examines not the horse but its saddle and bridle; equally foolish is he who judges a person by clothing or condition.
In the forty-eighth letter:
Open and simple things befit goodness. Even if much life remained, it ought to be spent sparingly so that it would suffice for necessities. But now, in such want of time, what madness it is to learn superfluous things.
In the forty-ninth letter:
What you have not lost, you possess. You have not lost horns; therefore you have horns. I have no time for such foolishness.
A great business is in my hands. What shall I do? Death follows me; life flees. Teach me something against these things.
Nature produced us teachable and gave us reason, imperfect indeed, but capable of being perfected.
[Running head: Sixth Title.]
In the fiftieth letter:
When I wish to take delight in a fool, I need not seek far: I laugh at myself.
Blind men seek a guide, but we wander without one. Therefore we reach health with difficulty, because we do not know that we are sick.
The beginning of the journey toward the virtues is arduous, because the first act of a weak and sick mind is to fear what it has not experienced. The mind must therefore be compelled to begin. Then the medicine is not bitter, for it delights immediately while it heals.
In the fifty-first letter:
We ought to act so as to flee as far as possible from the enticements of vice. The soul must be hardened and pleasures conquered, for they have carried off even savage dispositions to themselves.
Pursue vices without measure and without end, for they too possess neither end nor measure.
Cast away whatever things tear apart your heart. If they cannot otherwise be drawn out, the heart itself must be torn out with them.
Above all uproot pleasures, which embrace us after the manner of robbers in order to strangle us.
In the fifty-second letter:
Choose as your helper the person whom you admire more when you see him than when you hear him.
Why do you rejoice that you have been praised by those whom you yourself cannot praise?
Praise brings some exhortation to the hearers themselves and stimulates the spirits of the young.
In those diseases by which souls are afflicted, the worse a person is, the less he feels it. To tell a dream belongs to one who is awake, and to confess one’s faults is a sign of health.
Dismiss every impediment and devote yourself to a good mind. No one reaches it while occupied.
It belongs to a great artist to enclose the whole within a small space.
In the fifty-fourth letter:
Unless I am mistaken, we err in this: we judge that death follows, although it both preceded and will follow. Whatever was before us is death.
Praise and imitate the man who does not regret dying when it is pleasant to live. For what courage is there in leaving when you are being cast out?
The wise man does nothing unwillingly. He escapes necessity because he wills what he is compelled to do.
In the fifty-sixth letter:
No repose is pleasing except that which reason has composed.
All vices, like diseases, are lighter in the open. Know that they are most destructive when they lurk beneath a counterfeit appearance of health.
Nothing anticipates the mind of the wise man. No harmony of people or birds interrupts thoughts that are good, solid, and now certain.
In the fifty-eighth letter:
None of us is the same in the morning as he was the day before. Whatever you see runs with time. Nothing arisen is stable or firm and stable [read: None of these things is stable or solid], yet we desire those things as though they will last forever or we will always possess them.
In the fifty-ninth letter:
This especially impedes philosophy in us: we become pleased with ourselves too quickly and treat as our due whatever flattery heaps upon us. We assent to those who affirm that we are the best and wisest. It follows that we do not wish to be changed because we believe ourselves the best.
Everyone strives toward joy, but they do not know whence they may obtain stable and great joy.
The wise man is never without joy. Gardium [read: Gaudium, joy] is born only from consciousness of the virtues; it is neither interrupted nor ends. Fortune does not snatch away what does not end.
In the sixtieth letter:
A bull is filled by the pasture of very few acres. A single forest suffices for many elephants. Man, however, is fed by both land and sea. Yet the hunger of the belly does not cost much; ambition does.
In the sixty-first letter:
Before old age I took care to live well; in old age, to die well.
Take care that you never do anything unwillingly. He who gladly accepts commands escapes the bitterest part of slavery: doing what he does not wish. It is not the man who does something under command who is wretched, but the man who does it unwillingly.
Therefore let us compose our mind so that we will whatever circumstances require.
In the sixty-second letter:
Someone can despise all things; no one can possess all things. Thus the shortest road to riches is through contempt for riches.
In the sixty-third letter:
When a friend is lost, let the eyes neither be dry nor stream. One should weep, not wail.
Let us act so that remembrance of lost friends becomes pleasant to us. No one gladly returns to something that he will think about only with torment.
For me, remembrance of deceased friends is sweet and pleasing. I possessed them as one who was going to lose them; I have lost them as one who still possesses them.
In the sixty-fifth letter:
What cause did God have for making the world? He is good. No good thing envies any other good. Therefore he made it as good as he could.
You forbid me to take part in heaven—that is, you order me to live with lowered head. I am greater and born for greater things than to be the slave of my body.
I regard the body in no other way than as a chain placed around my freedom, contempt for which is certain liberty.
Let inferior things serve superior things. Let us be courageous against chance events.
In the sixty-sixth letter:
A great man can emerge from a hut, and a beautiful and great soul from a deformed and lowly little body. The soul is not disfigured by the body’s deformity; rather, the body is adorned by the soul’s beauty.
A soul that beholds truth, skilled in what should be fled and sought, imposing value upon things not according to opinion but nature, submitting itself to neither fortune and standing above everything that happens—this is the appearance of virtue.
Every virtue consists in measure. Everything honorable is voluntary, for what is not free cannot be honorable.
In the sixty-seventh letter:
I am not so mad that I should desire to be sick. But if I must be sick, I shall wish to do nothing effeminately. It is not praiseworthy to endure torments, but to endure them bravely.
In the sixty-eighth letter:
Many pass by open things; they investigate things stored away and obstrusa [read: abstrusa, hidden]. Sealed things tempt a thief; whatever lies open seems cheap, and a burglar passes by what is open.
Every very ignorant person possesses these habits: he desires to burst into secrets.
To hide too much and withdraw from people’s sight is a kind of boastfulness. One should not act so that people speak about you, but so that you speak with yourself.
Do to yourself what people most gladly do concerning others: assess your evils before yourself, and treat especially what you perceive to be strongest in you.
In the sixty-ninth letter:
He who wishes to lay aside desire for all the things with whose cupidity he burned should turn his eyes and ears away from what he has left behind, for passion quickly rebels wherever it turns.
No evil is without an inducement. Avarice promises money, luxury pleasure, and ambition power. Vices entice you with a reward.
It can scarcely be achieved in a whole lifetime that vices swollen by long license are subdued and accept the yoke.
In the seventieth letter:
Do you wish to be free against this body? Dwell in it as one who will migrate.
When will their end come to mind for those who desire everything without end?
No one is wretched except by his own vice.
In the seventy-first letter:
We sin because we all deliberate about parts of life; no one deliberates about the whole.
It is no wonder not to be shaken in tranquillity. The wonder is for someone to be lifted up where everyone is pressed down, and for someone to stand where everyone lies.
The imperfect man must slip, now advance, now fall. Yet a great part of progress is to wish to make progress.
[Running head: Chapter Twenty-Four, Folio 207.]
Let us act so that all our time is ours, which will not happen unless we first begin to be our own.
In the seventy-second letter:
Whatever fortune throws to those who are waiting, we let go without any pleasure, immediately torn away [read: intent/upright] and stupefied for the seizure of something else. This does not happen to the wise man: he is full. If anything comes to him, he receives it securely and stores it away.
In the seventy-third letter:
Whoever thinks about receiving has forgotten what he received. Cupidity has no greater evil than that it is ungrateful.
Philosophy teaches especially how benefits ought to be repaid. Sometimes the acknowledgment itself is repayment.
You marvel that people go to the gods. God comes to people—indeed, into people. No mind is good without God.
In the seventy-fourth letter:
Either the things called goods are not good, or man is happier than God, since God does not use the things prepared for us. Neither riches, delight in banquets, nor anything among those things that entice people pertains to him.
Let whatever things please God please man precisely because they please God.
In the seventy-fifth letter:
Let speech agree with life. He fulfills his promise who is the same when you see him and when you hear him. Let our words not delight but profit.
In the seventy-sixth letter:
What is more foolish than refusing to learn because one did not learn for a long time? As long as you live, you must learn.
He who advances toward more honorable things must despise contempt itself.
A good man will bear with an even spirit whatever happens to him, for he knows that it happened by the divine law according to which all things proceed.
Whenever you wish to enter upon a true estimation of a man, inspect him naked. Let him lay aside honors, patrimony, and the other falsehoods of fortune; let him strip off even the body itself. Look upon the soul—what sort and how great it is, whether great by something else or by itself.
A great part of evil among the ignorant is its novelty. Therefore the wise man accustoms himself to future evils and makes light by long reflection what others make light by long endurance.
In the seventy-seventh letter:
Life is not incomplete if it is honorable. Wherever you finish, if you finish well, it is whole.
Does he not seem to you the most foolish of all who weeps because he did not live a thousand years ago? Equally foolish is he who weeps because he will not live a thousand years hence. These are equal: you will not be; you were not. Both are foreign to you.
Why do you weep? You were born under this law. What is new? This happens to everyone.
As with a play, so with life: what matters is not how long but how well it was acted.
In the seventy-eighth letter:
Honorable consolations become a remedy, and whatever raises the soul also profits the body.
Three things are grave in every illness: fear of death, pain of the body, and interruption of pleasures. Enough has been said about death.
No one can suffer pain both intensely and for a long time. Nature, most loving toward us, has so arranged us that she makes pain either bearable or brief.
It is not bitter to lack what you have ceased to desire. Whatever has long been expected approaches more lightly.
In the seventy-ninth letter:
It is no goodness to be better than the worst. Virtue is now hidden, but to have lain hidden is no loss.
Truth is the same in every part of itself. Things that deceive have nothing solid.
In the eightieth letter:
Why do I speak about others? If you wish to weigh yourself, set aside money, house, and dignity; consider yourself within.
In the eighty-first letter:
You complain that you have encountered an ungrateful man. If you wish to avoid this danger, you will give no benefits. Lest they perish with another, they will perish with you.
Life will quickly grow torpid in idle inactivity if everything that offends must be abandoned. Even after a bad harvest one must sow.
The wise man knows at what value each thing should be assessed. He examines everything with himself: how much he received, from whom, when, where, and in what manner. Hence Methodorus [read: Metrodorus] says, “Only wise men know how to give thanks.”
Benefits grow through delay, and the later one pays, the more one must pay. He is ungrateful who returns a benefit without interest.
Whenever something is doubtful, humanity always inclines toward the better.
We esteem nothing more dearly than a benefit for which we have long petitioned, and nothing more cheaply once we have received it.
Riches, honors, power, and the other things that are dear in our opinion but cheap at their own price draw us away from what is right.
We do not know how to value things concerning which we must deliberate not with reputation but with the nature of things. They have nothing magnificent by which to draw our minds to themselves except that we have grown accustomed to admire them.
In the eighty-second letter:
Leisure without letters is death and the burial of a living person.
Death is not glorious; to die bravely is glorious.
In the eighty-third letter:
We must see ourselves as though we live in someone’s sight and think as though someone could look into our innermost being.
What profit is there in keeping anything secret from a person? Nothing is closed to God.
Drunkenness is nothing other than voluntary madness. It inflames and uncovers every vice and removes the modesty that obstructs evils, for more people abstain from sin because shame restrains them than because of a good will.
Reading nourishes talent and refreshes it when wearied by study, yet not without study. We ought neither only to write nor only to read. The former—I mean writing—will depress and exhaust our strength; the latter will loosen and dilute it. We must pass back and forth between the two so that the pen may reduce into one body whatever reading has gathered.
We ought to imitate bees, which wander and pluck flowers fit for making honey, then arrange whatever they have brought and distribute it through the combs.
So too we ought to separate whatever we have gathered from diverse reading, then employ the faculty of our talent to blend those various tastings into one flavor.
I wish our soul to be such that many arts, many precepts, and examples from many ages have conspired within it into one.
Relique divitias ante periculum aut onus praesidentium [read: relinque divitias, aut periculum possidentium aut onus]. Abandon pleasures that soften and enervate. Abandon ambition. It is a swollen, empty, and windy thing; it has no limit and labors under a double envy—that of the one who is envied and that of the one who envies.
In the eighty-fourth letter:
[read: In the eighty-fifth letter]
Moderation of illness is not good health.
It is easier to prevent the beginnings of vices than to govern their attack. You will more easily remove than regulate them.
A storm does not hinder the pilot’s work, but it has succeeded [read: does hinder his success/result].
The wise man is a craftsman who tames evils. Pain, want, disgrace, prison, and exile—things dreadful everywhere—reach him already made gentle.
In the eighty-fifth letter [read: the eighty-seventh letter]:
The soul is never greater than when it sets aside what is foreign to it, makes peace for itself by fearing nothing, and makes riches for itself by desiring nothing.
In the eighty-sixth letter [read: the eighty-eighth letter]:
Fidelity is the most sacred good of the human breast. No necessity compels it to deceive, and no reward corrupts it.
Temperance commands pleasures. Some it hates and drives away; others it distributes and reduces to a sacred [read: sound/healthy] measure. It never approaches them for their own sake. It knows that the best limit of desires is to take not as much as you wish but as much as you ought.
One can come to wisdom without liberal studies. If wisdom embraces any part of human and divine things, you will be wearied by the enormous abundance of questions. For these many and great matters to have free lodging, superfluous things must be removed from the mind. To wish to know more than is sufficient is a kind of intemperance.
[Running head: Sixth Title.]
I have excerpted all the things said above from the sayings of Seneca.
Concerning what was said above in § I about Nero compelling his teacher Seneca to die, Vincent says in Book 10, Chapter 9 of the Historical Mirror that one reads in the Chronicle that Seneca died after his veins were cut and poison had been taken.
It is said that Nero once looked upon Seneca and recalled the beatings Seneca had inflicted upon him from childhood. He groaned and wished, as it were, to seek vengeance from him for these injuries. Yet, showing him some deference as his teacher, he granted Seneca the choice of whatever kind of death he wished.
Seneca, judging it a gentle kind of death, chose to die in a bath by the cutting of a vein.
While Paul was held in public custody at Rome, he acquired Seneca’s friendship for himself.
It is related in the Acts of Saint Paul that Seneca, Caesar’s teacher, became so joined to him in friendship when he perceived divine knowledge in Paul that he could scarcely keep himself from Paul’s conversation. If he could not speak with him face to face, he nevertheless enjoyed his friendly conversation and counsel through letters frequently given and received.
Jerome says this about Seneca in the book On Illustrious Men: “Lucius Annaeus Seneca of Corduba, a disciple of the Stoic school and uncle of the poet Lucan, lived a most continent life. I would not place him in the catalogue of holy men unless those letters, read by very many, from Paul to Seneca and from Seneca to Paul prompted me. In them, although he was Nero’s teacher and most powerful at that time, he says that he wished to have among his own people the place that Paul held among Christians.”
Seneca was killed by Nero two years before Peter and Paul were crowned with martyrdom.
Augustine, however, in Book 6 of The City of God, reproves him for outwardly worshiping idols, although he was not unaware that they were not gods, but did so to conform himself to the people.
Augustine says: “The freedom that Varro lacked, so that he did not dare openly to reprove the urban theology, most similar to the theatrical, was not wholly absent from Annaeus Seneca, but neither was it wholly present. It was present in him when he wrote; it was absent when he lived.
“For in the book he published against superstitions, he reproved this civil and urban theology much more abundantly and vehemently than Varro reproved the theatrical and fabulous theology. Concerning the cruel and shameful rites themselves that were practiced in the temples, he wrote thus: ‘One cuts off his male parts; another cuts his arms. Where they fear angry gods in this way, how do they merit gods made favorable?’
“Varro did not possess this freedom; he dared to reprove only poetic theology, not civil theology. But this man whom philosophy had, as it were, made free nevertheless worshiped what he reproved, because he was an illustrious senator of the Roman people. He performed what he censured, because philosophy had taught him something great: not to be superstitious in the world, but, because of the laws of citizens and the customs of people, to imitate in a temple what an actor represented in a theater.
“He was the more damnable because he so feigned the acts he performed that the people thought he performed them truthfully.”
§ II: Flowers from Persius, the Satirical Poet, in Verse
Do not seek yourself outside yourself.
Your knowledge is nothing unless another knows that you know it.
What profit is there in bringing our own customs into the temples?
Tell me, pontiffs, what does gold do in a holy place?
There are a thousand kinds of people and a many-colored use of things. Each person has his own will, and we do not live by one wish.
Augustine sets down these verses of Persius in Book 2, Chapter 6 of The City of God:
“Learn, O wretched people, and know the causes of things: what we are and for what life we are born; what order is given, or how gentle a turn about the goal and from where; what limit there is to money; what it is right to desire; what useful purpose hard or freshly minted money has; how much it is fitting to bestow upon one’s country and dear relatives; whom God commanded you to be; and in what part of human life you have been placed.”
Excerpts from the Poet Juvenal
No one suddenly becomes supreme.
This vice is common: all of us now live in ambitious poverty.
The highest and the lowest alike possess desire.
“Thus I will it, thus I command it; let my will stand in place of reason.”
A woman knows what is happening throughout the whole city. She is first to see the report and receives fresh rumors at the gate.
Nothing is more intolerable than a wealthy woman.
Virtue is the soul’s sole and only nobility.
A man will come from the toga-wearing common people who resolves the knots of jurisprudence and the riddles of the laws.
Believe it the greatest sacrilege to prefer life to honor and, for the sake of life, to lose the reasons for living.
Every vice of the soul possesses a more conspicuous criminality in proportion to how great the sinner is regarded.
A torrent-like abundance of speech and their own deadly eloquence have proved fatal to many.
But money amassed with excessive care strangles more people.
The empty-handed traveler sang before a robber. Though you carry only a few vessels of pure silver, if you begin a journey at night you will fear sword and pike and at night [read: at the shadow of a moving reed] tremble at a reed’s shadow in the moonlight.
No one embraces virtue itself if you remove its rewards.
Death alone discloses how small human bodies are.
Agreement between beauty and chastity is rare.
Vice deceives through the hope [read: appearance] and shadow of virtue.
Love of money grows as money itself grows.
§ III: Flowers from Quintilian
In his Education of the Orator, Quintilian says:
Would that we ourselves did not destroy the character of our children. We nurture infancy immediately with luxuries. A soft upbringing, which we call indulgence, breaks every sinew of mind and body.
Every excellent teacher delights in a large attendance and considers himself worthy of a larger theater.
The chief sign of talent in children is memory, whose virtue is twofold: easily to grasp and faithfully to retain.
The man who compares himself to no one must necessarily attribute very much to himself.
A person’s age is most to be feared when it does not know how to dissemble and yields very easily to those who instruct it. You will more easily break than correct things hardened into perversity.
Those who mock grammar as a thin and meager art are not to be endured. Unless grammar faithfully lays the foundations, whatever you build above them collapses.
This art is necessary for children and pleasant for the old, a sweet companion of secrets. It alone, among every kind of study, has more work and less display.
Very many people, however, begin from what comes later through ambitious haste, while they wish to display their pupils amid attractive subjects.
Custom is the surest teacher of speech. We use customary words more safely; we devise new words not without danger.
[Running head: Chapter Twenty-Four, Folio 208.]
The same author says in Book 2:
One should judge not how old each person is but how much each has accomplished in his studies.
One must be free not only from the beginning of shameful conduct but also from suspicion of it.
The talents of children fail through excessive severity of correction. They despair, grieve, and finally hate. What does the greatest harm is that while they fear everything, they attempt nothing.
Each person prefers to reprove another’s vices rather than his own.
Do not attempt what cannot be accomplished, nor transfer someone from what he does best to something for which he is less suited.
Just as seeds are scattered in vain unless a prepared furrow has nurtured them, so knowledge cannot gain strength unless concord joins the teacher and recipient.
There is a certain proximity of virtues and vices by which the rash man is taken for brave and the extravagant speaker for abundant.
The highest prudence with the readiest counsel consists in much labor, continual study, varied practice, and very many experiments.
Money, favor, the authority and dignity of the speaker, and finally even appearance without a voice persuade as effectively as the art of speaking.
The reward of the litigant is victory, not a good conscience.
It is not just that something by which one may make good use should be regarded as evil.
It is certain that all things which art has perfected took their beginnings from nature. Even before we are taught, certain beginnings and seeds of virtues have been granted to us by nature, as with justice, some image of which appears even among peasants and barbarians.
The same author says in Book 3:
Authority has the greatest influence in deliberations. The man who wishes everyone to believe his opinion concerning useful and honorable matters ought to be regarded as most prudent and excellent.
The same author says in Book 4:
We must persevere at least because we began. If strength fails, let us nevertheless persevere in spirit.
It is natural that judges more readily believe those whom they hear more gladly.
One must speak more modestly when praising oneself than when praising another.
Nothing is easily persuaded to those who are unwilling.
Things that cannot be accomplished at all must not be attempted.
The same author says in Book 5:
In obvious matters it is as foolish to wish to argue as to bring a mortal light into the brightest sun.
A ruler who wishes to know everything must pardon many things.
The same author says in Book 8:
Boasting is vicious and brings not only weariness but often even hatred to its hearers. Our mind possesses something lofty, erect, and intolerant of a superior.
Therefore we gladly raise up those who are cast down and humble themselves, because in doing so we appear greater. But whoever raises himself beyond measure is believed to press down and despise us. He does not make himself greater so much as he makes others smaller.
Nothing is more pleasing for reconciling souls than modesty.
Each person knows himself and should take counsel for action not only from common precepts but also from his own nature.
Only a mind free from every vice can devote itself to the study of the most beautiful work. First, there is no fellowship of shameful and honorable things in the same breast. For one soul to think simultaneously about the best and most dreadful things is no more possible than for one thing to be simultaneously good and evil.
Nothing is so occupied, so manifold, so cut and torn by varied passions as an evil mind. When it plots, it is distracted by hope, cares, and labor. Even when it has accomplished the crime, anxiety, repentance, and expectation of every punishment torment it.
He will certainly persuade others better who has first persuaded himself. No faculty of speaking is so great that it does not falter and stick whenever the words disagree with the soul.
Imitation of the best things, although deprived of the enticements of words, is nevertheless sufficiently adorned by its own nature.
This often happens to us: although we are satisfied with the best things, variety from cheaper things is nevertheless pleasing to us.
The same author says in the first declamation of the book of declamations:
The whole freedom of man is to have lost his eyes. The eyes are the means through which we cannot endure poverty. The eyes are all our luxury. They daily cast us headlong into every vice: they marvel, adore, and covet.
It is easier to fill the soul’s satisfaction; nothing is more difficult than to postpone joy.
In the second declamation:
The rashness of every soul is broken by bodily calamity, and the impulses of minds grow cold when the service of the limbs does not execute them.
In the third declamation:
Idleness grows wanton toward every wish when fortune favors it.
This is the condition of superiors: whatever they do, they seem to command.
Whoever is the greatest author of an evil affair is most destructive.
In the fourth declamation:
If anyone knows what is the end of goods and what true happiness is, he will never think that he will perish by premature death.
Idle ardor must erupt into crime.
To fear by day and night exceeds every calamity.
In the fifth declamation:
This belongs to the nature of human weakness: from all the things that happen, each person thinks what he suffers is the gravest. Among the impatient, even the smallest things must prevail as their greatest.
In the sixth declamation:
One ought to persist in labor where an outcome is promised, for care that possesses no hope is foolish.
In the seventh declamation:
The nature of things wished nothing among human affairs to be so similar that it did not distinguish it by some property.
In the eighth declamation:
I find nothing in human affairs that nature devised more excellent than friendship, or any greater assistance against fortune than concord.
What could be happier for the human race than if everyone could be friends? Neither wars, seditions, robberies, lawsuits, nor the other evils born among people from themselves would have been added to fortune.
Heavenly providence has distinguished our hearts with much variety and has given no fewer forms of souls than of bodies.
In the tenth declamation:
There is no punishment except for one who is unwilling. We possess no pain except from impatience, and fear makes something cruel.
In the eleventh declamation:
Nothing ever torments more gravely than abandoned hope.
In the twelfth declamation:
He who defends what is confessed seeks not acquittal from the crime but license for it.
In the thirteenth declamation:
There is no more just sorrow than to have lost the reckoning of a benefit.
One does not recoil without some pang from things that have held the soul through pleasure.
You do not know whether a person loves whose proofs you possess only in prosperity.
In the fifteenth declamation:
Nothing in human affairs possesses more impatience than the effect of one who is dying [read: the emotion/impulse of one who is dying].
In the sixteenth declamation:
You must speak more contentiously whatever you cannot prove, and whatever does not possess affirmation from truth takes it from the speaker.
I believe that no virtue is more difficult than silence. We sin so easily through the readiest speech that we cannot endure steadfast silence even in others.
In the seventeenth declamation:
It is a kind of reverence to have no wish to know things that must be kept silent.
He whom one cannot trust has no cause to speak. All faith in his words and all authority of his speech have been taken away from him.
All these sayings are Quintilian’s. He was also the teacher of Pliny.