Three Books of Offices, Or Moral Duties: And His Cato Major, an Essay on Old Age; Laelius, an Essay on Friendship; Paradoxes; Scipio's Dream; and Letter to Quintus on the Duties of a Magistrate. Literally Translated, with Notes, Designed to Exhibit a Comparative View of the Opinions of Cicero, and Those of Modern Moralists and Ethical Philosophers |
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Common terms and phrases
able actions advantage affection appear authority become better body called cause character Cicero common concerning conduct consider consideration consists death delight desire duty enemy equal excellent exist expedient father feel force fortune friends friendship give glory greater greatest hand happen happiness honor hope human important interest justice kind knowledge labor learning less live mankind manner matter means mentioned mind moral nature necessary never object observed old age opinion pass passion perform person philosophers pleasure possess practice prefer present preserve principle promise reason received regard relation require respect rich Roman rule Scipio seems senate sense slaves society sometimes soul speak spirit suffer suppose taken things thought tion treat true truth virtue virtuous whole wisdom wise wish worthy young
Popular passages
Page 240 - GOD ALMIGHTY first planted a garden. And, indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures ; it is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man, without which buildings and palaces are but gross handiworks.
Page 254 - Are such abilities made for no purpose ? A brute arrives at a point of perfection that he can never pass : in a few years he has all the endowments he is capable of...
Page 299 - We see then how far the monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the monuments of power or of the hands. For have not the verses of Homer continued twenty-five hundred years, or more, without the loss of a syllable or letter; during which time infinite palaces, temples, castles, cities, have been decayed and demolished...
Page 113 - THERE is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic : a man's own observation, what he finds good of, and what he finds hurt of, is the best physic to preserve health. But it is a safer conclusion to say, ' This agreeth not well with me, therefore I will not continue it '; than this, ' I find no offence of this, therefore I may use it.
Page 205 - Nay, retire men cannot when they would, neither will they when it were reason, but are impatient of privateness, even in age and sickness, which require the shadow; like old townsmen, that will' be still sitting at their street door, though thereby they offer age to scorn.
Page 299 - But the images of men's wits and knowledges remain in books, exempted from the wrong of time, and capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are they fitly to be called images, because they generate still, and cast their seeds in the minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions and opinions in succeeding ages...
Page 16 - Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights, and live laborious days : But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears And slits the thin-spun life. But not the praise...
Page 258 - Were my memory as faithful as my reason is then fruitful, I would never study but in my dreams; and this time also would I choose for my devotions: but our grosser memories have then so little hold of our abstracted understandings, that they forget the story, and can only relate to our awaked souls a confused and broken tale of that that hath passed.
Page 299 - So that if the invention of the ship was thought so noble, which carrieth riches and commodities from place to place, and consociateth the most remote regions in participation of their fruits, how much more are letters to be magnified, which as ships pass through the vast seas of time, and make ages so distant to participate of the wisdom, illuminations, and inventions, the one of the other?
Page 258 - Morpheus; and that those abstracted and ecstatic souls do walk about in their own corpse, as spirits with the bodies they assume, wherein they seem to hear, see, and feel, though indeed the organs are destitute of sense, and their natures of those faculties that should inform them.
Bibliographic information
| Title | Three Books of Offices, Or Moral Duties: And His Cato Major, an Essay on Old Age; Laelius, an Essay on Friendship; Paradoxes; Scipio's Dream; and Letter to Quintus on the Duties of a Magistrate. Literally Translated, with Notes, Designed to Exhibit a Comparative View of the Opinions of Cicero ... Harper's classical library |
| Author | Marcus Tullius Cicero |
| Translated by | Cyrus R.. Edmonds |
| Publisher | Harper, 1868 |
| Original from | the University of Michigan |
| Digitized | 2 Oct 2007 |
| Length | 343 pages |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |