"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!
Notes and observations. Diversions and digressions. All done far too infrequently.
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."
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