Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1064

When he had swilled and gormandized to a luxurious and beastly excess, he was carried away from supper to bed with this song and acclamation, “He has lived, he has lived.” That which he did in lewdness, will become us to do in sobriety and prudence. If it shall please God to add another day to our lives, let us thankfully receive it; but, however, it is our happiest and securest course so to compose ourselves to-night, that we may have no anxious dependence on to-morrow.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1408

We should, every one of us, bethink ourselves, how remiss we have been in our duties, how immodest in our discourses, how intemperate in our cups; and why not, as well, how extravagant we have been in our passions? Let us clear ourselves of this evil, purge our minds, and utterly root out all those vices, which upon leaving the least sting, will grow again and recover. We must think of everything, expect everything, that we may not be surprised. It is a shame, says Fabius, for a commander to excuse himself by saying, “I was not aware of it.”

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1341

He that is wise will behave himself toward all men as we do to our children; for they are but children too, though they have gray hairs: they are indeed of a larger size, and their errors are grown up with them; they live without rule, they covet without choice, they are timorous and unsteady; and if at any time they happen to be quiet, it is more out of fear than reason.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 120

It is further to be observed, that all benefits are good; and (like the distributions of Providence) made up of wisdom and bounty; whereas the gift itself is neither good nor bad, but may indifferently be applied, either to the one or to the other. The benefit is immortal, the gift perishable: for the benefit itself continues when we have no longer either the use or the matter of it.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 810

The passage to virtue is fair, but the way to greatness is craggy and it stands not only upon a precipice, but upon ice too; and yet it is a hard matter to convince a great man that his station is slippery, or to prevail with him not to depend upon his greatness; but all superfluities are hurtful. A rank crop lays the corn; too great a burden of fruit breaks the bough; and our minds may be as well overcharged with an immoderate happiness.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 9

In this state of corruption, who so fit as a good honest Christian Pagan for a moderator among Pagan Christians?

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 234

Shall I see an honest man oppressed at the bar, and not assist him, for fear of a court faction? or not second him upon the highway against thieves, for fear of a broken head? and choose rather to sit still, the quiet spectator of fraud and violence? Why will men be just, temperate, generous, brave, but because it carries along with it fame and a good conscience? and for the same reason, and no other, (to apply it to the subject in hand,) let a man also be bountiful.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1022

There is no slavish attendance upon great officers, no canvassing for places, no making of parties, no disappointments in my pretension to this charge, to that regiment, or to such or such a title, no envy of any man’s favor or fortune; but a calm enjoyment of the general bounties of Providence in company with a good conscience. A wise man is never so busy as in the solitary contemplation of God and the works of Nature.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 892

I value myself upon what passengers think of me, and tacitly renounce my principles, whereas I should rather lift up my voice to be heard by mankind, and tell them “You are all mad—your minds are set upon superfluities and you value no man for his virtues.”

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 818

Alexander was possessed with the madness of laying kingdoms waste. He began with Greece, where he was brought up; and there he quarried himself upon that in it which was the best; he enslaved Lacedemon, and silenced Athens: nor was he content with the destruction of those towns which his father Philip had either conquered or bought; but he made himself the enemy of human nature; and, like the worst of beasts, he worried what he could not eat.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 999

It is an usual saying “I would give my life for such or such a friend,” when, at the same time, we do give it without so much as thinking of it; nay, when that friend is never the better for it, and we ourselves the worse. Our time is set, and day and night we travel on. There is no baiting by the way, and it is not in the power of either prince or people to prolong it.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 441

If ingratitude were liable to a law, we must never give but before witnesses, which would overthrow the dignity of the benefit: and then the punishment must either be equal where the crimes are unequal, or else it must be unrighteous, so that blood must answer for blood. He that is ungrateful for my saving his life must forfeit his own. And what can be more inhuman than that benefits should conclude in sanguinary events? A man saves my life, and I am ungrateful for it.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 724

If I were an imperial prince, I had rather take than be taken; and yet I would bear the same mind under the chariot of my conqueror that I had in my own. It is no great matter to trample upon those things that are most coveted or feared by the common people. There are those that will laugh upon the wheel, and cast themselves upon a certain death, only upon a transport of love, perhaps anger, avarice, or revenge; how much more then upon an instinct of virtue, which is invincible and steady!

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 680

Some are cured by the lance; by fire, hunger, thirst; taking out of bones, lopping off limbs, and the like: nor do we only fear things that are many times beneficial to us; but, on the other side, we hanker after and pursue things that are deadly and pernicious: we are poisoned in the very pleasure of our luxury, and betrayed to a thousand diseases by the indulging of our palate.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 280

poor man, he has forgotten it,” as if that were the excuse of ingratitude, which is the very cause of it: for if he were not ungrateful, he would not be forgetful, and lay that out of the way which should be always uppermost and in sight. He that thinks as he ought to do, of requiting a benefit, is in no danger of forgetting it. There are, indeed, some benefits so great that they can never slip the memory; but those which are less in value, and more in number, do commonly escape us.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 240

If he should give only for his own sake, what would become of poor mortals, that have nothing to return him at best but dutiful acknowledgments? It is putting out of a benefit to interest only to bestow where we may place it to advantage.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 905

We have examples in all ages and cases, of great men that have triumphed over all misfortunes. Metellus suffered exile resolutely, Rutilius cheerfully; Socrates disputed in the dungeon; and though he might have made his escape, refused it; to show the world how easy a thing it was to subdue the two great terrors of mankind, _death_ and a _jail_. Or what shall we say of Mucius Scevola, a man only of a military courage, and without the help either of philosophy or letters?

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 378

But when we come to consider that Providence and Nature are still at work when we sleep, with the admirable force and operation of their influences and motions, we cannot then but acknowledge their ornament to be the least part of their value; and that they are more to be esteemed for their virtues than for their splendor. Their main end and use is matter of life and necessity, though they may seem to us more considerable for their majesty and beauty.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 153

Let it not be unseasonable neither; as a furred gown in summer, an umbrella in winter. It enhances the value of the present, if it was never given to him by anybody else, nor by me to any other; for that which we give to everybody is welcome to nobody.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 616

“He that would be truly happy, must think his own lot best, and so live with men, as considering that God sees him, and so speak to God as if men heard him.”

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 789

Pleasures do but weaken our minds, and send us for our support to Fortune, who gives us money only as the wages of slavery. We must stop our eyes and our ears. Ulysses had but one rock to fear, but human life has many. Every city, nay, every man, is one; and there is no trusting even to our nearest friends. Deliver me from the superstition of taking those things which are light and vain for felicities.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1039

Crates saw a young man walking by himself; “Have a care,” says he “of lewd company.” Some men are busy in idleness, and make peace more laborious and troublesome than war; nay, and more wicked too, when they bestow it upon such lusts, and other vices, which even the license of a military life would not endure. We cannot call these people men of leisure that are wholly taken up with their pleasures.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 24

He is also charged by Fabius as no profound philosopher; but with all this, he allows him to be a man very studious and learned, of great wit and invention, and well read in all sorts of literature; a severe reprover of vice; most divinely sententious; and well worth the reading, if it were only for his morals; adding, that if his judgment had been answerable to his wit, it had been much the more for his reputation; but he wrote whatever came next; so that I would advise the reader (says he) to distinguish where he _himself_ did not, for there are many things in him, not only to be approved, but admired; and it was great pity that he that could do what he would, should not always make the best choice.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 540

_Moral philosophy_ is again divided into matter of _justice_, which arises from the estimation of things and of men; and into _affections_ and _actions_; and a failing in any one of these, disorders all the rest: for what does it profit us to know the true value of things, if we be transported by our passion? or to master our appetites without understanding the _when_, the _what_, the _how_, and other circumstances of our proceedings?

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1474

They are of all creatures the fiercest for their bigness; and leave their stings behind them in their quarrels; only the king himself has none, intimating that kings should neither be vindictive nor cruel.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 307

The king was so incensed at the abuse, that he immediately commanded the right owner to be restored to his estate, and the unthankful guest and soldier to be stigmatized for an example to others.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 58

Seneca had two wives; the name of the first is not mentioned; his second was Paulina, whom he often speaks of with great passion. By the former he had his son Marcus.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 648

The common soldier where he cannot use his hands, fights with his looks, his example, his encouragement, his voice, and stands his ground even when he has lost his hands, and does service too with his very clamor, so that in any condition whatsoever, he still discharges the duty of a good patriot—nay, he that spends his time well even in a retirement, gives a great example.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1220

for it leaves no place either for counsel or friendship, honesty or good manners; no place either for the exercise of reason, or for the offices of life.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 36

Let no man, says Lactantius, think himself the safer in his wickedness for want of a witness; for God is omniscient, and to him nothing can be a secret. It is an admirable sentence that Seneca concludes his Exhortations withal: “God,” says he, “is a great, (I know not what), an incomprehensible Power; it is to him that we live, and to him that we must approve ourselves.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 396

This way of proceeding, over and above that it is impious in itself, is likewise over-hasty and unseasonable: for he that goes too fast is as much to blame as he that does not move at all, (to say nothing of the injustice,) for if I had never been obliged, I should never have wished it.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 53

The youngest brother (Annæus Mela) was Lucan’s father. Seneca was about twenty years of age in the _fifth year_ of Tiberius, when the Jews were expelled from Rome. His father trained him up to _rhetoric,_ but his genius led him rather to _philosophy;_ and he applied his wit to _morality_ and _virtue_.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 328

He that is a tribune would be prætor; the prætor, a consul; never reflecting upon what he _was_, but only looking forward to what he _would_ be. People are still computing, _Must I lose this or that benefit_? If it be lost, the fault lies in the ill bestowing of it; for rightly placed, it is as good as consecrated; if we be deceived in another, let us not be deceived in ourselves too.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1294

This is undoubtedly the most detestable of vices, even compared with the worst of them. Avarice scrapes and gathers together that which somebody may be the better for: but anger lashes out, and no man comes _off_ gratis. An angry master makes one servant run away, and another hang himself; and his choler causes him a much greater loss than he suffered in the occasion of it. It is the cause of mourning to the father, and of divorce to the husband: it makes the magistrate odious, and gives the candidate a repulse. And it is worse than luxury too, which only aims at its proper pleasure; whereas the other is bent upon another body’s pain.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1383

It is not enough to be sound ourselves, unless we endeavor to make others so, wherein we must accommodate the remedy to the temper of the patient. Some are to be dealt with by artifice and address: as, for example, “Why will you gratify your enemies to show yourself so much concerned?

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 189

Nay, if a man does but so much as repent the good office done, and grow sour and insolent upon it, and upbraid me with it; if he did it only for his own sake, or for any other reason than for mine, I am in some degree, more or less, acquitted of the obligation. I am not at all beholden to him that makes me the instrument of his own advantage. He that does me good for his own sake, I will do him good for mine.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1322

To see a rich old cuff, that has nobody to leave his estate to, break his heart for a handful of dirt; and a gouty usurer, that has no other use of his fingers left him but to count withal; to see him, I say in the extremity of his fit, wrangling for the odd money in his interest. If all that is precious in Nature were gathered into one mass, it were not worth the trouble of a sober mind.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1304

Lysimachus, another of his friends, he exposed to a lion; and this very Lysimachus, after he had escaped this danger, was never the more merciful when he came to reign himself; for he cut off the ears and nose of his friend Telesphorous; and when he had so disfigured him that he had no longer the face of a man, he threw him into a dungeon, and there kept him to be showed for a monster, as a strange sight.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 414

We subdue the strongest of creatures and overtake the fleetest—we reclaim the fiercest and outwit the craftiest. We are within one degree of heaven itself, and yet we are not satisfied.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 604

It is but a main point to take care that we propose nothing but what is hopeful and honest. For it will be equally troublesome to us, either not to succeed, or to be ashamed of the success. Wherefore let us be sure not to admit any ill design into our heart; that we may lift up pure hands to heaven and ask nothing which another shall be a loser by. Let us pray for a good mind, which is a wish to no man’s injury.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 504

Men are vicious only for the proof of villainy; for at the same time that they commit it they condemn it; nay, so powerful is virtue, and so gracious is Providence, that every man has a light set up within him for a guide, which we do, all of us, both see and acknowledge, though we do not pursue it.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1466

I have been always slow to severity, and prone to forgive; and under as strict a guard to observe the laws as if I were accountable for the breaking of them. Some I pardoned for their youth, others for their age. I spare one man for his dignity, another for his humility; and when I find no other matter to work upon, I spare myself.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 136

So long as we are affected with passions, and distracted with hopes and fears, and (the most unmanly of vices) with our pleasures, we are incompetent judges where to place our bounties: but when death presents itself, and that we come to our last will and testament, we leave our fortunes to the most worthy. He that gives nothing, but in hopes of receiving, must die intestate.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 50

All these things,” says Seneca, a while after, “a wise man will observe for the law’s sake more than for the gods; and all this rabble of deities, which the superstition of many ages has gathered together, we are in such manner to adore, as to consider the worship to be rather matter of custom than of conscience.” Whereupon St. Augustine observes, that this illustrious senator worshipped what he reproved, acted what he disliked, and adored what he condemned.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1153

Wherever we go, we have the heavens over our heads, and no farther from us than they were before; and so long as we can entertain our eyes and thoughts with those glories, what matter is it what ground we tread upon?

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 41

Austin, he writes thus: “They represent the holy, the immortal, and the inviolable gods in the basest matter, and without life or motion; in the forms of men, beasts, fishes, some of mixed bodies, and those figures they call deities, which, if they were but animated, would affright a man, and pass for monsters.” And then, a little farther, treating of Natural Theology, after citing the opinions of philosophers, he supposes an objection against himself: “Somebody will perhaps ask me, would you have me then to believe the heavens and the earth to be gods, and some of them above the moon, and some below it?

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1117

If destiny were to be wrought upon by tears, I would allow you to spend your days and nights in sadness and mourning, tearing of your hair, and beating of your breast; but if Fate be inexorable, and death will keep what it has taken, grief is to no purpose.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 401

It is barbarous even to an enemy, much more to a friend; for it is not so much to do him a kindness, as to put him in need of it. Of the two, let me rather be a scar than a wound; and yet it would be better to have it neither. Rome had been little beholden to Scipio if he had prolonged the Punic war that he might have the finishing of it at last, or to the Decii for dying for their country, if they had first brought it to the last extremity of needing their devotion.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 192

Some will have it that the necessity of wishing a man well is some abatement to the obligation in the doing of him a good office. But I say, on the contrary, that it is the greater; because the good-will cannot be changed. It is one thing to say, that a man could not but do me this or that civility, because he was forced to do it; and another thing, that he could not quit the good-will of doing it. In the former case, I am a debtor to him that imposeth the force, in the other to himself.

Morals of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency, passage 1403

We are all members of one body, and it is as natural to help one another as for the hands to help the feet, or the eyes the hands. Without the love and care of the parts, the whole can never be preserved, and we must spare one another because we are born for society, which cannot be maintained without a regard to particulars. Let this be a rule to us, never to deny a pardon, that does no hurt either to the giver or receiver.