Monday, April 09, 2007

Just finished: Cicero's De Senectute (On Old Age)

Montaigne was most correct when he said that Cicero gives "one an appetite for growing old."
"For what advantage is there in life? Or rather, are not its troubles infinite? No there are advantages too: yet all the same there comes a time when one has had enough. That does not mean that I am joining the large and learned body of life's critics! I am not sorry to have lived, since the course of my life has taken has encouraged me to believe that I have lived to some purpose. But what nature gives us is a place to dwell in temporarily, not one to make our own. When I leave life, therefore, I shall feel as I am leaving a hostel rather than a home."
They don't make Stoics like Cicero the staple of sound learning anymore. What a shame!

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