... Insatiable, unfathomable, gluttony searches every land and every sea. Some animals it persecutes with snares and traps, with hunting nets, with hooks, sparing no sort of toil to obtain them . . . There is no peace allowed to any species of being . . . No wonder that with so discordant diet disease is ever varying. . . Count the cooks you will no longer wonder at the innumerable number of human maladies. … If these maxims are true, the Pythagorean principles as to abstaining from flesh foster innocence; if ill-founded they at least teach us frugality, and what loss have you in losing your cruelty? I merely deprive you of the food of lions and vultures ... We shall recover our sound reason only if we shall separate ourselves from the herd - the very fact of the approbation of the multitude is a proof of the unsoundness of the opinion or practice. Let us ask what is best, not what is customary. Let us love temperance - let us be just - let us refrain from bloodshed. None is so near the gods as he who shows kindness.
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Let wickedness escape as it may at the bar, it never fails of doing justice upon itself; for every guilty person is his own hangman.
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Behold a worthy sight, to which the God, turning his attention to his own work, may direct his gaze. Behold an equal thing, worthy of a God, a brave man matched in conflict with evil fortune.
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Fear keeps pace with hope. Nor does their so moving together surprise me; both belong to a mind in suspense, to a mind in a state of anxiety through looking into the future. Both are mainly due to projecting our thoughts far ahead of us instead of adapting ourselves to the present. Thus it is that foresight, the greatest blessing humanity has been given, is transformed into a curse.
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Virtue depends partly upon training and partly upon practice; you must learn first, and then strengthen your learning by action. If this be true, not only do the doctrines of wisdom help us but the precepts also, which check and banish our emotions by a sort of official decree.
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Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est.
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He that visits the sick in hopes of a legacy, but is never so friendly in all other cases, I look upon him as being no better than a raven that watches a weak sheep only to peck out its eyes.
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If you would judge, understand.
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Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life - in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a color.
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It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.
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He who boasts of his descent, praises the deed of another.
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How long shall we weary heaven with petitions for superfluous luxuries, as though we had not at hand wherewithal to feed ourselves? How long shall we fill our plains with huge cities? How long shall the people slave for us unnecessarily? How long shall countless numbers of ships from every sea bring us provisions for the consumption of a single mouth? An ox is satisfied with the pasture of an acre or two; one wood suffices for several elephants. Man alone supports himself by the pillage of the whole earth and sea. What! Has Nature indeed given us so insatiable a stomach, while she has given us such insignificant bodies? No, it is not the hunger of our stomachs, but insatiable covetousness which costs so much. … In the simpler times there was no need of so large a supernumerary force of medical men, nor of so many surgical instruments or of so many boxes of drugs. Health was simple for a simple reason. Many dishes have induced many diseases. Note how vast a quantity of lives one stomach absorbs ...
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Let not the enjoyment of pleasures now within your grasp, be carried to such excess as to incapacitate you from future repetition.
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...a sword never kills anybody it's a tool in the killer's hand. From Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, Letters to Lucilius on Morals, Letter 87, c.63-65
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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.
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Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness. - Epistulae ad Lucilium
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A quarrel is quickly settled when deserted by one party; there is no battle unless there be two.
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A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient, nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant.
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I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.
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Anger: an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.
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Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.
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The bad fortune of the good turns their faces up to heaven; the good fortune of the bad bows their heads down to the earth.
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The less we deserve good fortune, the more we hope for it.
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As long as you live, keep learning how to live.
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It is true greatness to have in one the frailty of a man and the security of a god.
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If a man knows not what harbor he seeks, any wind is the right wind.
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There is nothing in the world so much admired as a man who knows how to bear unhappiness with courage.
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The greatest remedy for anger is delay.
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Those who boast of their descent, brag on what they owe to others.
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I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and read the other, for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God, who is the searcher of our hearts, all our privacies are open?
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