Honor is due to those who are keeping watch, Sentinels guarding their own Thermopylae; Never distracted from what is right to do, And right to be; in all things virtuous, But never so hardened by virtue as not to be Compassionate, available to pity; Generous if they’re rich, but generous too, Doing...
RECTIUS VIVES You will live better, Licinius, by neither always pressing the deep nor, while you carefully dread storms, by excessively pressing the treacherous shore. Whoever values a golden mean is safely free from the squalor of a worn-out house, is soberly free from an envious palace. The vast pine is more often moved by...
And if you can’t shape your life the way you want, at least try as much as you can not to degrade it by too much contact with the world, by too much activity and talk. Try not to degrade it by dragging it along, taking it around and exposing it...
Bend and you will be whole. Curl and you will be straight. Keep empty and you will be filled. Grow old and you will be renewed. Have little and you will gain. Have much and you will be confused. Therefore, the Sage embraces the One, And becomes a Pattern to all under...
May 1907 As long as you chase happiness, you are not ready to be happy, even if you owned everything. As long as you lament a loss, run after prizes in restless races, you have not yet known peace. But when you have moved beyond desire, become a stranger to your goals and...
When they saw that Patroclus was slain, who had been so stalwart, and strong, and young, the horses of Achilles started to weep; their immortal nature was indignant at the sight of this work of death. They would shake their heads and toss their manes, stamp the ground with their feet,...
O you who are cruel still, and a master of Venus’s gifts, when a white, unexpected plumage surmounts all your arrogance, and the tresses that wave on your shoulders have all been shorn away, and the colour that now outshines the flower of the crimson rose is transformed, my...
Don’t break a bird’s wings and then tell it to fly. Don’t break a heart and then tell it to love. Don’t break a soul and then tell it to be happy. Don’t see the worst in a person and expect them to see the...
The houses I had they took away from me. The times happened to be unpropitious: war, destruction, exile; sometimes the hunter hits the migratory birds, sometimes he doesn’t hit them. Hunting was good in my time, many felt the pellet; the rest circle aimlessly or go mad in the shelters. Don’t...
Meditations pure were ours Side by side, along the ways; We held each other's hand without Speaking, among the hidden flowers. Alone we walked as if betrothed, Lost in the green night of the fields; We shared this fruit of fairy reels, The moon, to madmen well disposed. And then, we were dead...
