Sublime

Latin quotes will include a great deal of Seneca’s aphorisms—lines like “Necessity is usually more powerful than duty” (Trojan Women 581), or “Nature takes revenge on everybody” (Phaedra 352), or “Crime must be hidden by crime” (Medea 721). The aphorisms often speak to recurrent preoccupations of Seneca’s, with fortune and its many reversals (“A ma

“The first thing to do—don’t get worked up. For everything happens according to the nature of all things, and in a short time you’ll be nobody and nowhere, even as the great emperors Hadrian and Augustus are now. The next thing to do—consider carefully the task at hand for what it is, while remembering that your purpose is to be a good human being.

Do not act as if thou wert going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over thee. While thou livest, while it is in thy power, be good.