Quotes
Quotes about Man
It is a difficult thing for a man to resist the natural necessity of mortal passions.
Lampis, the sea commander, being asked how he got his wealth, answered, "My greatest estate I gained easily enough, but the smaller slowly and with much labour."
Both Empedocles and Heraclitus held it for a truth that man could not be altogether cleared from injustice in dealing with beasts as he now does.
For to err in opinion, though it be not the part of wise men, is at least human.
As Meander says, "For our mind is God;" and as Heraclitus, "Man's genius is a deity."
O slavish man! will you not bear with your own brother, who has God for his Father, as being a son from the same stock, and of the same high descent? But if you chance to be placed in some superior station, will you presently set yourself up for a tyrant?
When one maintains his proper attitude in life, he does not long after externals. What would you have, O man?
If we are not stupid or insincere when we say that the good or ill of man lies within his own will, and that all beside is nothing to us, why are we still troubled?
In theory there is nothing to hinder our following what we are taught; but in life there are many things to draw us aside.
Appearances to the mind are of four kinds. Things either are what they appear to be; or they neither are, nor appear to be; or they are, and do not appear to be; or they are not, and yet appear to be. Rightly to aim in all these cases is the wise man's task.
The appearance of things to the mind is the standard of every action to man.
The images of twenty of the most illustrious families--the Manlii, the Quinctii, and other names of equal splendour--were carried before it [the bier of Junia]. Those of Brutus and Cassius were not displayed; but for that very reason they shone with pre-eminent lustre.
It belongs to human nature to hate those you have injured.
Thou seest how few be the things, the which if a man has at his command his life flows gently on and is divine.
No state sorrier than that of the man who keeps up a continual round, and pries into "the secrets of the nether world," as saith the poet, and is curious in conjecture of what is in his neighbour's heart.
Though thou be destined to live three thousand years and as many myriads besides, yet remember that no man loseth other life than that which he liveth, nor liveth other than that which he loseth.
For a man can lose neither the past nor the future; for how can one take from him that which is not his? So remember these two points: first, that each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle, and that it signifies not whether a man shall look upon the same things for a hundred years or two hundred, or for an infinity of time; second, that the longest lived and the shortest lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing.
The lot assigned to every man is suited to him, and suits him to itself.
A man should be upright, not be kept upright.
Remember that man's life lies all within this present, as 't were but a hair's-breadth of time; as for the rest, the past is gone, the future yet unseen. Short, therefore, is man's life, and narrow is the corner of the earth wherein he dwells.
As surgeons keep their instruments and knives always at hand for cases requiring immediate treatment, so shouldst thou have thy thoughts ready to understand things divine and human, remembering in thy every act, even the smallest, how close is the bond that unites the two.
That which makes the man no worse than he was makes his life no worse: it has no power to harm, without or within.
Many the lumps of frankincense on the same altar; one falls there early and another late, but it makes no difference.
Remember this,--that there is a proper dignity and proportion to be observed in the performance of every act of life.
Mark how fleeting and paltry is the estate of man,--yesterday in embryo, to-morrow a mummy or ashes. So for the hair's-breadth of time assigned to thee live rationally, and part with life cheerfully, as drops the ripe olive, extolling the season that bore it and the tree that matured it.
