suicides

"Great minds had rather deserve contemporaneous applause, without obtaining it, than obtain, without deserving it; if it follow them, it is well, but they will not deviate to follow it. With inferior minds the reverse is observable."

"It is almost as difficult to make a man unlearn his errors as his knowledge. Mal-information is more hopeless than non-information; for error is always more busy than ignorance. Ignorance is a blank sheet, on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one, on which we must first erase. Ignorance is contented to stand still with her back to the truth; but error is more presumptuous, and proceeds in the same direction. Ignorance has no light, but error follows a false one. The consequence is, that error, when she retraces her footsteps, has further to go, before she can arrive at the truth, than ignorance."

"That writer does the most, who gives his reader the most knowledge, and takes from him the least time."

"It is always safe to learn, even from our enemies, seldom safe to venture to instruct, even our friends."

"Deliberate with caution, but act with decision; and yield with graciousness, or oppose with firmness."

"Imitation is the sincerest of flattery."

"Our incomes should be like our shoes, if too small, they will gall and pinch us, but, if too large, they will cause us to stumble, and to trip. But wealth, after all, is a relative thing, since he that has little, and wants less, is richer than he that has much, but wants more. True contentment depends not upon what we have, but upon what we would have; a tub was large enough for Diogenese, but a world was too little for Alexander."

"We ask advice, but we mean approbation."

"As in literature we shall find many things that are true, and some things that are new, but very few things that are both true and new, so also in life, we shall find many men that are great, and some men that are good, but very few men that are both great and good."

"We hate some persons because we do not know them; and we will not know them, because we hate them. Those friendships that succeed to such aversions are usually firm, for those qualities must be sterling that could not only gain our hearts, but conquer our prejudices. But the misfortune is, that we carry these prejudices into things far more serious than our friendships. Thus, there are truths which some men despise, because they have not examined, and which they will not examine, because they despise."

"When you have nothing to say, say nothing; a weak defense strengthens your opponent, and silence is less injurious than a bad reply."

"An elegant writer has observed, that wit may do very well for a mistress, but that he should prefer reason for a wife."

"Pedantry prides herself on being wrong by rules; while common sense is contented to be right, without them."

"None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them; such persons covet secrets as a spendthrift covets money, for the purpose of circulation."

"Liberty will not descend to a people, a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed."

"Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them."

"A free press is the parent of much good in a state. But even a licentious press is a far less evil than a press that is enslaved, because both sides may be heard in the former case, but not in the latter. A licentious press may be an evil, an enslaved press must be so; for an enslaved press may cause error to be more current than wisdom, and wrong more powerful than right; a licentious press cannot efiect these things, for if it give the poison, it gives also the antidote, which an enslaved press withholds. An enslaved press is doubly fatal, it not only takes away the true light, for in that case we might stand still, but it sets up a false one, that decoys us to our destruction."

"We often pretend to fear what we really despise, and more often to despise what we really fear."

"If you cannot inspire a woman with love of you, fill her above the brim with love of herself;— all that runs over will be yours."

"Friendship often ends in love; but love in friendship—never."

"Drunkenness is the vice of a good constitution or of a bad memory—of a constitution so treacherously good that it never bends till it breaks; or of a memory that recollects the pleasures of getting intoxicated, but forgets the pains of getting sober."

"Pedantry crams our heads with learned lumber, and takes out our brains to make room for it."

"With the offspring of genius, the law of parturition is reversed; the throes are in the conception, the pleasure in the birth."

"A feast is more fatal to love than a fast, and a surfeit than a starvation."

"Those illustrious men, who, like torches, have consumed themselves, in order to enlighten others, have often lived unrewarded, and died unlamented. But the tongues of aftertimes have done them justice in one sense, but injustice in another. They have honoured them with their praise, but they have disgraced them with their pity. They pity them forsooth, because they missed of present praise, and temporal emolument; things great indeed to the little, but little to the great."

"To know the pains of power, we must go to those who have it; to know its pleasures, we must go to those who are seeking it; the pains of power are real, its pleasures imaginary."

"Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones."

"This tendency, however, to ascribe an universality of genius to great men, led Dryden to affirm, on the strength of two smart satyrical lines, that Virgil could have written a satire equal to Juvenal. But, with all due deference to Dryden, I conceive it much more manifest, that Juvenal could have written a better epic than Virgil, than that Virgil could have written a satire equal to Juvenal. Juvenal has many passages of the moral sublime far superior to any that can be found in Virgil, who, indeed, seldom attempts a higher flight than the sublime of description. Had Lucan lived, he might have rivalled them both, as he has all the vigour of the one, and time might have furnished him with the taste and elegance of the other."

"If you would be known, and not know, vegetate in a village; If you would know, and not be known, live in a city."

"Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer."

"To sentence a man of true genius to the drudgery of a school, is to put a race horse in a mill."

"Suicide sometimes proceeds from cowardice but not always; for cowardice sometimes prevents it; since as many live because they are afraid to die, as die because they are afraid to live."

"Nero wasn’t worried at all when he heard the utterance of the Delphic Oracle: “Beware the age of seventy-three.” Plenty of time to enjoy himself still. He’s thirty. The deadline the god has given him is quite enough to cope with future dangers. … And in Spain Galba secretly musters and drills his army — Galba, the old man in his seventy-third year."

"Nero came to power when his mother poisoned her husband, the Emperor. As Emperor himself, Nero indulged his tendencies to debauchery and cruelty. No one was safe from him, especially those who failed to appreciate his self-proclaimed skill as a musician and actor. His extravagances bankrupted the Empire, provoking the revolts that finally deposed him. An admirer of Greek culture, he effectively rebuilt Rome after a devastating fire."

"The arts of the magician are said to have been called into action by Nero upon occasion of the assassination of his mother, Agrippina. He was visited with occasional fits of the deepest remorse in the recollection of his enormity. Not with-standing all the ostentatious applauses and congratulations which he obtained from the senate, the army and the people, he complained that he was perpetually haunted with the ghost of his mother, and pursued by the Furies with flaming torches and whips. He therefore cased himself to be attended by magicians, who employed their arts to conjure up the shade of Agrippina and to endeavour to obtain her forgiveness for the crime perpetrated by her son. We are not informed of the success of their evocations."

"God, save us from ourselves! We carry within us the elements of hell if we but choose to make them such. Ahaz, Judas, Nero, Borgia, Herod, all were once prattling infants in happy mother's arms."

"Nero saw himself as an artist; his enemies thought of him as a tyrant and a buffoon. The truth is, he was all three. He certainly wasn't very good at running an empire, but then, what did Rome expect? If you put a messed-up sixteen-year-old in charge of half the known world, you're asking for trouble. Rome learned the hard way. From now on, it abandoned the Julio-Claudian line of emperors in favour of skilled administrators. But Nero did leave his mark on history. Whatever else he wasn't, he was a showman. He did everything in a big way, from building his house to killing his mother. He thought of himself as an actor, but no part he ever played on the stage could match the drama, the spectacle and the sheer theatricality of his own life."

"Qualis artifex pereo."

"The emperor who ‘fiddled while Rome burned’, Nero was the last of the Julio-Claudian dynasty that took Rome from Republic to one-man rule. Raised amidst violence and tyranny, he ruled with ludicrous vanity, demented whimsy and inept despotism. Few mourned his abdication and death amidst the chaos that he himself had created."

"The absolute ruler may be a Nero, but he is sometimes Titus or Marcus Aurelius; the people is often Nero, and never Marcus Aurelius."

"Thus Nero went up and down Greece and challenged the fiddlers at their trade. Æropus, a Macedonian king, made lanterns; Harcatius, the king of Parthia, was a mole-catcher; and Biantes, the Lydian, filed needles."

"Vellem nescire literas."

"The people love Nero. He inspires in them both affection and respect. There is a reason for this which Tacitus omits. One can discern the reason for this popular feeling: Nero oppressed the great and never burdened the ordinary people. But Tacitus says nothing of this. He speaks of crimes. He speaks of them with passion. We, as a result, feel he is biased; he no longer inspires the same confidence. One is led to believe that he exaggerates; he explains nothing and appears satisfied with vignettes."