Voices of the Muses

“Above all, my dear Lucilius, make this your business: learn how to feel joy.”

“All other forms of perception divide the man, because they are based exclusively either in the sensuous or in the spiritual part of his being. It is only the perception of beauty that makes of him an entirety, because it demands the co-operation of his two natures.”

“It would seem, Adeimantus, that the direction in which education starts a man, will determine his future life. Does not like always attract like?”

“Do you ask me what this real good is, and whence it derives? I will tell you: it comes from a good conscience, from honourable purposes, from right actions, from contempt of the gifts of chance, from an even and calm way of living which treads but one path.”

“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events.”

“For this is your duty, to act well the part that is given to you; but to select the part, belongs to another.”

“To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.”

“If thou workest at that which is before thee, following right reason seriously, vigorously, calmly, without allowing anything else to distract thee, but keeping thy divine part pure, as if thou shouldst be bound to give it back immediately; if thou holdest to this, expecting nothing, fearing nothing, but satisfied with thy present activity according to nature, and with heroic truth in every word and sound which thou utterest, thou wilt live happy. And there is no man who is able to prevent this.”

“There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.”

“Therefore, we should decide what we wish, and abide by the decision.”

“For, to speak out once for all, man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays.”

“Natural desires are limited; but those which spring from false opinion can have no stopping-point. The false has no limits. When you are travelling on a road, there must be an end; but when astray, your wanderings are limitless.”