Cicero's Three Books of Offices, Or Moral Duties: Also His Cato Major, an Essay on Old Age ; Lælius, an Essay on Friendship ; Paradoxes ; Scipio's Dream ; and Letter to Quintus on the Duties of a Magistrate

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Harper, 1855 - Ethics - 343 pages

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Page 240 - GOD ALMIGHTY first planted a garden. And, indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures ; it is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man, without which buildings and palaces are but gross handiworks.
Page 5 - Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.
Page 204 - Men in great place are thrice servants: servants of the sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of business; so as they have no freedom, neither in their persons nor in their actions, nor in their times. It is a strange desire to seek power and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others and to lose power over a man's self.
Page 258 - Were my memory as faithful as my reason is then fruitful, I would never study but in my dreams; and this time also would I choose for my devotions: but our grosser memories have then so little hold of our abstracted understandings, that they forget the story, and can only relate to our awaked souls a confused and broken tale of that that hath passed.
Page 174 - It is as natural to die as to be born ; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other. He that dies in an earnest pursuit, is like one that is wounded in hot blood : who, for the time, scarce feels the hurt ; and therefore a mind fixed and bent upon somewhat that is good, doth avert the dolours of death ; but, above all, believe it, the sweetest canticle is 'Nunc dimittis,' when a man hath obtained worthy ends and expectations.
Page 301 - Then said I in my heart, As it happeneth to the fool, so it happeneth even to me; and why was I then more wise? Then I said in my heart, that this also is vanity.
Page 302 - Plato, thou reasonest well ! Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, This longing after immortality ? Or whence this secret dread and inward horror Of falling into naught?
Page 265 - I CANNOT call riches better than the baggage of virtue ; the Roman word is better, impedimenta. For as the baggage is to an army, so is riches to virtue. It cannot be spared, nor left behind, but it hindereth the march ; yea, and the care of it sometimes loseth or disturbeth the victory.
Page 272 - Whatever is expedient, is right. It is the utility of any moral rule alone, which constitutes the obligation of it.
Page 206 - THE love of Retirement has, in all ages, adhered closely to those minds which have been most enlarged by knowledge or elevated by genius. Those who enjoyed every thing generally supposed to confer happiness have been forced to seek it in the shades of privacy.

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