Great Throughts Treasury

"But it is one thing to remember, another to know. Remembering is merely safeguarding something entrusted to the memory; knowing, however, means making everything your own; it means not depending upon the copy and not all the time glancing back at the master."

"But life is a warfare."

"But no one is going to restore you your years, no one will pay you back. Life will follow the path started and will neither reverse, but nor to limit its course. It will not make noise, it will remind you how fast it is. You slip silent; not going to become bigger with royal orders or popular applause. It started on the first day, so you will continue; nowhere will not change its path, nowhere will not delay. And finally what is the result? You will have absorbed from your hobbies and life will proceed smoothly, and somewhere in between will come death, for which, whether you like it or not, you have to find some free time."

"But nothing is so damaging to good character as the habit of lounging at the games; for then it is that vice steals subtly upon one through the avenue of pleasure."

"But nothing will help quite so much as just keeping quiet, talking with other people as little as possible, with yourself as much as possible. For conversation has a kind of charm about it, an insinuating and insidious something that elicits secrets from us just like love or liquor. Nobody will keep the things he hears to himself, and nobody will repeat just what he hears and no more. Neither will anyone who has failed to keep a story to himself keep the name of his informant to himself. Every person without exception has someone to whom he confides everything that is confided to himself. Even supposing he puts some guard in his garrulous tongue and is content with a single pair of ears, he will still be the creator of a host of later listeners ? such is the way in which what was but a little while before a secret becomes common rumor."

"But only philosophy will wake us; only philosophy will shake us out of that heavy sleep. Devote yourself entirely to her. You're worthy of her, she's worthy of you-fall into each other's arms. Say a firm, plain no to every other occupation."

"But there is no point of having sheltered all the personal reasons for sadness, if sometimes misanthropy took possession of your soul, seeing the crime everywhere happy, so rare candor, innocence so little known, good faith so neglected when it is no profit, gains and prodigality of the equally odious debauchery; finally, if unbridled ambition that if disregarding itself, it seeks his brilliance in baseness. Then one dark night surrounds our soul, and this annihilation virtues impossible to find in others, and damaging to one who has, it fills in doubt and darkness. To turn away from these ideas, let us ensure that the vices of men do not seem obnoxious, but ridiculous; let us imitate Democritus and Heraclitus instead. The first never appeared in public without crying; the second, without laughing. One in everything that men saw only misery; the second qu'ineptie. We must therefore attach little importance to all things, and do not excite us. It is more consistent with humanity to make fun of things in life than to moan. Add that it is better for mankind to care that whine about it."

"But whatever the quality of my works may be, read them as if I were still seeking, and were not aware of, the truth, and were seeking it obstinately, too. For I have sold myself to no man; I bear the name of no master. I give much credit to the judgment of great men; but I claim something also for my own. For these men, too, have left to us, not positive discoveries, but problems whose solution is still to be sought."

"But when you are looking on anyone as a friend when you do not trust him as you trust yourself, you are making a grave mistake, and have failed to grasp sufficiently the full force of true friendship."

"But words, even if they came to you readily and flowed without any exertion on your part, yet would have to be kept under control. For just as a less ostentatious gait becomes a philosopher, so does a restrained style of speech, far removed from boldness. Therefore, the ultimate kernel of my remarks is this: I bid you be slow of speech."

"But, comes the reply, I am being driven from the farm which my father and grandfather owned! Well? Who owned the land before your grandfather? Can you explain what people (I will not say what person) held it originally? You did not enter upon it as a master, but merely as a tenant. And whose tenant are you? If your claim is successful, you are tenant of the heir. The lawyers say that public property cannot be acquired privately by possession;11 what you hold and call your own is public property ?indeed, it belongs to mankind at large."

"Call it Nature, Fate, Fortune; all these are names of the one and self-same God."

"Can anything be more idiotic than certain people who boast of their foresight? They keep themselves officiously preoccupied in order to improve their lives; they spend their lives in organizing their lives. They direct their purposes with an eye to a distant future. But putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune?s control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining?"

"Cast away everything of that sort, if you are wise; nay, rather that you may be wise; strive toward a sound mind at top speed and with your whole strength. If any bond holds you back, untie it, or sever it. "But," you say, "my estate delays me; I wish to make such disposition of it that it may suffice for me when I have nothing to do, lest either poverty be a burden to me, or I myself a burden to others." You do not seem, when you say this, to know the strength and power of that good which you are considering."

"Caution comes too late when we are in the midst of evils."

"Certain laws have not been written, but they are more fixed than all the written laws."

"Chance makes a football of man's life."

"CHORUS: Any deception spent on them? APOSTLE: As is customary in the elimination of the Kings. Gifts."

"Cling tooth and nail to the following rule: Not to give in to adversity, never to trust prosperity, and always to take full note of fortune's habit of behaving just as she pleases, treating her as if she were actually going to do everything it is in her power to do. Whatever you have been expecting for some time comes as less of a shock."

"Cling, therefore, to this sound and wholesome plan of life; indulge the body just so far as suffices for good health... Your food should appease your hunger, your drink quench your thirst, your clothing keep out the cold, your house be a protection against inclement weather. It makes no difference whether it is built of turf or variegated marble imported from another country: what you have to understand is that thatch makes a person just as good a roof as gold."

"Compare with the following : No man ruleth safely but that he is willingly ruled."

"Concealed anger is to be feared; but hatred openly manifested destroys its chance of revenge."

"Consider an enemy may become a friend."

"Consider the whole world ?reconnoitre individuals? who is there whose life is not taken up with providing for tomorrow Do you ask what harm there is in this An infinite deal for such men do not live but are about to live they defer everything from day to day however circumspect we are life will still outrun us."

"Consider well all the things we lost draws tears and troubles us meaning; you will find that what ails us is not so much what we lose what we believe to have lost. No one feels the loss in his imagination (opinion). He who has not lose anything; but there are very few who know how to have."

"Consider, when you are enraged at any one, what you would probably think if he should die during the dispute."

"Constant exposure to dangers will breed contempt for them."

"Consult your friend on all things, especially on those which respect yourself. His counsel may then be useful where your own self-love might impair your judgment."

"Conversation has a kind of charm about it, an insinuating and insidious something that elicits secrets just like love or liquor."

"Corporeal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty."

"Count your years and you'll be ashamed to be wanting and working for exactly the same things as you wanted when you were a boy. Of this one thing make sure against your dying day - that your faults die before you do. Have done with those unsettled pleasures, which cost one dear - they do one harm after they're past and gone, not merely when they're in prospect. Even when they're over, pleasures of a depraved nature are apt to carry feelings of dissatisfaction, in the same way as a criminal's anxiety doesn't end with the commission of the crime, even if it's undetected at the time. Such pleasures are insubstantial and unreliable; even if they don't do one any harm, they're fleeting in character. Look around for some enduring good instead. And nothing answers this description except what the spirit discovers for itself within itself. A good character is the only guarantee of everlasting, carefree happiness. Even if some obstacle to this comes on the scene, its appearance is only to be compared to that of clouds which drift in front of the sun without ever defeating its light."

"Courage leads to heaven; fear, to death."

"Crime oft recoils upon the author's head."

"Crime requires further crime to conceal it."

"Crime when it succeeds is called virtue."

"Dangerous is wrath concealed. Hatred proclaimed doth lose its chance of wreaking vengeance."

"Death either destroys or unhusks us. If it means liberation, better things await us when our burden's gone: if destruction, nothing at all awaits us; blessings and curses are abolished."

"Death falls heavily on that man who, known too well to others, dies in ignorance of himself."

"Death is a punishment to some, to others a gift and to many a favour."

"Death is a release from and an end of all pains."

"Death is a release from and an end of all pains: beyond it our sufferings cannot extend: it restores us to the peaceful rest in which we lay before we were born. If anyone pities the dead, he ought also to pity those who have not been born. Death is neither a good nor a bad thing, for that alone which is something can be a good or a bad thing: but that which is nothing, and reduces all things to nothing, does not hand us over to either fortune, because good and bad require some material to work upon. Fortune cannot take ahold of that which Nature has let go, nor can a man be unhappy if he is nothing."

"Death is sometimes a punishment, often a gift; to many it has been a favour."

"Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all. It sets the slave at liberty, carries the banished man home, and places all mortals on the same level, insomuch that life itself were a punishment without it."

"Death presses heavily on that man, who, being but too well known to others, dies in ignorance of himself."

"Death takes us piecemeal, not at a gulp."

"Death weighs on him who is known to all, but dies unknown to himself."

"Death: There's nothing bad about it at all except the thing that comes before it-the fear of it."

"Delay is the greatest remedy for anger."

"Delay not; swift the flight of fortune's greatest favours."

"Democracy is more cruel than wars or tyrants."