"For if the whole of a man's life is to be measured by the standard of pleasure, you see how much trouble is in store for us. We must consider not what is pleasant, but what is consistent with the dignity of human nature; for there is a certain dignity in man, which the beasts do not share. If we lose sight of this, we shall be unable to maintain any standard of conduct." (Cicero, De Finibus 2.44).
"But what is this 'bearing'? It is the same as the endurance of labor... we must then apply to the soul that which is called fortitude, which consists of two parts, the contempt of pain and the contempt of death. To these we must bring a certain alertness of mind, so that we may not only not fear, but even despise them." (Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 2.53).
"But when with a rational spirit you have surveyed the whole field, there is no social relation among them all more close and none more dear than that which links each one of us with our country. Parents are dear; children, relatives, friends are dear; but our country has on its own embraced all the affections of all of us together; for which what good man would hesitate to face death, if he could do her a service?" (Cicero, De Officiis 1.57).
Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.
For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize.
Nature is a source or cause of being moved and of being at rest in that to which it belongs primarily.
We suppose ourselves to possess unqualified scientific knowledge of a thing, as opposed to knowing it in the accidental way of the sophist, when we think that we know the cause on which the fact depends, as teh cause of that fact and of no other, and, further, that the fact could not be other than is is.
Telle est donc la règle la meilleure, et tel est le critère le plus beau pour les biens extérieurs : qu’on soit empêché le moins possible par eux de servir et de contempler Dieu. This, therefore, is the end and the best limit regarding external things, so that the soul may be hindered as little as possible from the contemplation of God and His worship. Hic igitur finis sit et optimus terminus ad res externas respicienti, ut quam minime impediatur anima a contemplatione dei et cultu eius
We may now say that our discourse about the nature of the universe has an end. The world has received animals, mortal and immortal, and is fulfilled with them, and has become a visible animal containing the visible--the sensible God who is the image of the intellectual, the greatest, best, fairest, most perfect--the one only begotten heaven.
My dear Socrates, that, then, is the nature of the Spirit called Love.