PossesseTh' by Fire

The blazing fire makes flames and brightness out of everything thrown into it.

Everything - a horse, a vine - is created for some duty... For what task, then, were you yourself created?

It's a kindness that the mind can go where it wishes.

If these matters and the virtues, and also friendship and pleasure, have been dealt with sufficiently in outline, are we to suppose that our programme has reached its end? Surely, as the saying goes, where there are things to be done the end is not to survey and recognize the various things, but rather to do them; with regard to virtue, then, it is not enough to know, but we must try to have and use it, or try any other way there may be of becoming good. Now if arguments were in themselves enough to make men good, they would justly, as Theognis says, have won very great rewards, and such rewards should have been provided; but as things are, while they seem to have power to encourage and stimulate the generous-minded among our youth, and to make a character which is gently born, and a true lover of what is noble, ready to be possessed by virtue, they are not able to encourage the many to nobility and goodness. For these do not by nature obey the sense of shame, but only fear, and do not abstain from bad acts because of their baseness but through fear of punishment; living by passion they pursue their own pleasures and the means to them, and and the opposite pains, and have not even a conception of what is noble and truly pleasant, since they have never tasted it. What argument would remould such people? It is hard, if not impossible, to remove by argument the traits that have long since been incorporated in the character; and perhaps we must be content if, when all the influences by which we are thought to become good are present, we get some tincture of virtue.

Remember the words of Monimus the Cynic: “Everything is opinion.” This principle is not only true but beneficial—if you know how to use it.

Not to have been born at all, Never to have seen the light of the sun: This is the best thing for mortals. Or, if begotten, to have fallen from the womb Straight into the grave, And to be smothered, unknowing, In the dirt of Hades.

Frightened of change? But what can exist without it? What’s closer to nature’s heart? Can you take a hot bath and leave the firewood as it was? Eat food without transforming it? Can any vital process take place without something being changed? Can’t you see? It’s just the same with you—and just as vital to nature.

You embarked, you set sail, you made port. Go ashore now. It is to another life, nothing is empty of the gods, even on that shore: and if to insensibility, you will cease to suffer pains and pleasures,no longer in thrall to a bodily vessel which is a master as far inferior as its servant is superior. One is the mind and divinity: the other a clay of dust and blood.

If you don't know, ask. You will be a fool for the moment, but a wise man for the rest of your life.

Oderint dum metuant. Let them hate me, as long as they fear me.