287 definitions
The book's index
On the Ends of Good and Evil (De Finibus)
187 concepts · 287 definitions
- absence of pain1
- academic1
- affection1
- ambition1
- animal1
- argument1
- art1
- art of living1
- art of memory1
- astronomy1
- Athens1
- avarice2
- beauty2
- birthday1
- blindness1
- bodily goods2
- brevity1
- captivity1
- character1
- cheerfulness1
- child1
- childhood1
- congratulation1
- conscience1
- consistency1
- contentment1
- courage3
- crime1
- curiosity2
- death3
- debate1
- definition1
- desire3
- dialectic1
- dilettante1
- dining1
- discovery1
- dishonesty1
- duty2
- education1
- elation1
- eloquence1
- emotion1
- Epicureanism2
- error1
- euphemism1
- expediency1
- extravagant desire1
- fame1
- familiarity1
- farming1
- fear1
- fear of death1
- fiction1
- fool1
- forgetfulness1
- forgetting1
- fortune1
- freedom1
- freedom from pain1
- friend1
- friendship6
Pleasure (n.) as the wise man's aim is like Xerxes bridging the Hellespont and cutting through Athos to procure some honey from Hymettus.
Pleasure (n.) is so abandoned a character that she should never be introduced into the company of those honourable ladies the Virtues; her very name is suspect.
Pleasure (n.) is a feeling known to every sparrow.
Pleasure (n.) needs no proof, any more than that fire is hot, snow white, honey sweet: it is enough merely to draw attention to it.
Virtue (n.) eclipses all bodily advantages as the sun eclipses a lamp, as a drop of honey is lost in the Aegean, as a sixpence is nothing amid the wealth of Croesus.
Virtue (n.) proclaims Regulus, tormented with sleeplessness and hunger at Carthage, happier than Thorius carousing on his couch of roses.
Virtue (n.) based entirely on pleasure is a foundation laid in water.
Virtue (n.) alone, made the Chief Good, is the glamour of a name; were the virtues not productive of pleasure, who would deem them praiseworthy or desirable?
Pain (n.) can be kept in its place: \"No pain from there has got to here,\" said Arcesilas, racked with gout, pointing from his feet to his breast.
Pain (n.) is irksome, hateful, unnatural and hard to bear, say the Stoics, but not an evil — and the hearer goes away no stronger to endure it.
Pain (n.) is nothing to the sage, says Epicurus, who tells us that if he were being burnt to death he would exclaim, \"How delightful this is!\"
Pain (n.) depends for its intensity on the state of mind of the sufferer, not on its own nature: men endure the same pain more easily for their country than for a lesser cause.
Happiness (n.) is a matter of seizing the right moment, so that Wisdom herself upon occasion bids the wise man to leave her.
Happiness (n.) is to be reckoned not by the avoidance of evil but by the attainment of good.
Happiness (n.) belongs not to merriment, wantonness or jesting; those are happy, often in sadness, whose wills are strong and true.
Happiness (n.) is no more desirable lasting than brief: if the merit of a shoe were to fit the foot, many shoes would be no better than few.
Wisdom (n.) did not create man herself, but took him over in the rough from Nature; her business is to finish the statue that Nature began.
Wisdom (n.) becomes dearer to us than the instincts that first led us to her, as a new friend becomes dearer than the person who introduced him.
Wisdom (n.) is like acting or dancing, not like seamanship or medicine: its end, the actual exercise of the art, is contained within the art itself.
Wisdom (n.) cannot be seen by our eyes, the keenest of our senses; could we see her, what passionate love would she awaken!
Stoicism (n.) is theft with the marks altered: as thieves change the marks on stolen goods, the Stoics changed the names of our opinions to pass them off as their own.
Stoicism (n.) is like geometry: grant the premises and you must grant everything.
Stoicism (n.) is so closely jointed that if you alter a single letter, you shake the whole structure.
Stoicism (n.) is more a new vocabulary than new ideas: Zeno was rather an inventor of new terms than a discoverer of new ideas.
Friendship (n.) is so rare in legend that from Theseus to Orestes you will barely find three pairs of friends — yet Epicurus kept a whole company of them in one small house.
Friendship (n.) kept for profit will make you long for your friend's death to release you from an unprofitable tie.
Friendship (n.) measured by profit is outweighed by the rents of a valuable estate; measured by its own charm, it is unsurpassed in value.
Friendship (n.) is, of all the means to happiness that wisdom has devised, the greatest, the most fruitful and the most delightful.
Justice (n.) can be preserved only by a brave and a wise man.
Justice (n.) is the sentiment that assigns each his own and maintains with generosity and equity the solidarity of mankind.
Justice (n.) is the faithful guardian of human society.
Justice (n.) and friendship adopted for their utility would be undermined and overthrown by the same claims of utility.
Philosophy (n.) is the Science of Life, and cannot treat its subject in language taken from the street.
Philosophy (n.) is a study that increases in value the further it proceeds; to set limits to it is to stop half-way in what is essentially unlimited.
Philosophy (n.) learns to speak Latin in Cato's mouth, and is naturalized as a Roman citizen.
Philosophy (n.) that cares for mind or body alone is like a man who ignores the left side of his body and protects the right.
The Wise man (n.) rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else endures pains to avoid worse pains.
The Wise man (n.) is always happy, yet one wise man may be happier than another.
The Wise man (n.) remembers the past with gratitude, grasps the present, and does not rely upon the future; he looks forward to it, but finds his true enjoyment in the present.
The Wise man (n.) will be affected, even when he has resolved that he must die, by parting from his friends and merely by leaving the light of day.