Time to Live

Category: Quotes

  • Give Me Liberty …

    The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.

    With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor.

    Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name, liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names — liberty and tyranny. Abraham Lincoln

  • Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

    Henry David Thoreau

  • Be yourself; everyone else is already taken. Oscar Wilde

  • Anything too stupid to be said will be sung. Voltaire

  • We See Through a Glass Darkly

    Some men shrink into dark corners. to such a degree that they see darkly by day. Pomponius

  • Friendship

    If you consider any man a friend whom you do not trust as you trust yourself, you are mightily mistaken and you do not sufficiently understand what true friendship means. Indeed, I would have you discuss everything with a friend; but first of all discuss the man himself. When friendship is settled, you must trust; before friendship is formed, you must pass judgement.

    Those persons indeed put last first and confound their duties, who violating the rules of Theophrastus, judge a man after they have made him their friend, instead of making him their friend after they have judged him. Ponder for a long time whether you shall admit a given person to your friendship; but when you have decided to admit him, welcome him with all your heart and soul. Speak as boldly with him as with yourself.

    Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic

  • When is it Enough?

    The thought for today is one which I discovered in Epicurus; for I am wont to cross over even into the enemy’s camp — not as a deserter, but as a scout. He says: “Contented poverty is an honorable estate.”

    Indeed, if it be contented, it is not poverty at all. It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. What does it matter how much a man has laid up in his safe, or in his warehouse, how large are his flocks and how fat his dividends, if he covets his neighbor’s property, and reckons, not his past gains, but his hopes of gains to come?

    Do you ask what is the proper limit to wealth? It is, first, to have what is necessary, and second, to have what is enough.

    Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic