Posts by Cassius

VS68. Nothing is sufficient for him to whom what is sufficient seems too little.

VS65. It is vain to ask of the gods what a man is capable of supplying for himself.

VS62. Now if parents are justly angry with their children, it is certainly useless to fight against it, and not to ask for pardon; but if their anger is unjust and irrational, it is quite ridiculous to add fuel to their irrational passion by nursing one’s own indignation, and not to attempt to turn aside their wrath in other ways by gentleness.

VS61. Most beautiful too is the sight of those near and dear to us, when our original kinship makes us of one mind; for such sight is great incitement to this end.

VS60. Every man passes out of life as though he had just been born.

VS59. It is not the stomach that is insatiable, as is generally said, but the false opinion that the stomach needs an unlimited amount to fill it.

VS58. We must free ourselves from the prison of public education and politics.

VS57. On occasion a man will die for his friend, for if he betrays his friend, his whole life will be confounded by distrust and completely upset.

VS32. The veneration of the wise man is a great blessing to those who venerate him.

VS12. The just man is most free from disturbance, while the unjust is full of the utmost disturbance. See PD17.

VS56. The wise man feels no more pain, when being tortured himself than when his friend is tortured.

#VS55. We must heal our misfortunes by the grateful recollection of what has been, and by the recognition that it is impossible to undo that which has been done.

Note: See the discussion of the background of this issue in Cicero's Tusculan Disputations Part 3, Sections 15-18

VS54. We must not pretend to study philosophy, but study it in reality, for it is not the appearance of health that we need, but real health.

VS53. We must envy no one, for the good do not deserve envy, and the bad, the more they prosper, the more they injure themselves.

VS50. No pleasure is a bad thing in itself, but the things which produce certain pleasures entail disturbances many times greater than the pleasures themselves.

VS49. It is impossible for someone to dispel his fears about the most important matters if he does not know the Nature of the universe, but still gives some credence to myths. So, without the study of Nature, there is no enjoyment of pure pleasure.

VS48. We must try to make the end of the journey better than the beginning, as long as we are journeying; but when we come to the end, we must be happy and content.

VS46. Let us utterly drive from us our bad habits, as if they were evil men who have long done us great harm.

VS45. The study of nature does not make men productive of boasting or bragging, nor apt to display that culture which is the object of rivalry with the many, but high-spirited and self-sufficient, taking pride in the good things of their own minds and not of their circumstances.

VS44. The wise man, when he has accommodated himself to straits, knows better how to give than to receive, so great is the treasure of self-sufficiency which he has discovered.