Category: Quotation

diffuse, vapid, rhetorical, but enchanting

As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us. Epictetus indeed, has given us what was good of the stoics; all beyond, of their dogmas, being hypocrisy and grimace. Their great crime was in their calumnies of Epicurus and misrepresentations of his doctrines; in which we lament to see the candid character of Cicero engaging as an accomplice. Diffuse, vapid, rhetorical, but enchanting. His prototype Plato, eloquent as himself, dealing out mysticisms incomprehensible to the human mind, has been deified by certain sects usurping the name of Christians; because, in his foggy conceptions, they found a basis of impenetrable darkness whereon to rear fabrications as delirious, of their own invention. These they fathered blasphemously on him whom they claimed as their founder, but who would disclaim them with the indignation which their caricatures of his religion so justly excite.Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Short, October 31, 1819

 

October 3, 2019

practice, practice, practice

He is capable of behaving kindly, but he is not kind. He is capable of committing acts of generosity, but he is not generous. He is capable of being loyal, but he is fundamentally disloyal.Testimony of Michael D. Cohen, Committee on Oversight and Reform, U.S. House of Representatives, February 27, 2019

 

So things done are called just and moderate whenever they are such that the just person or the moderate person would do them; whereas a person is not just and moderate because he does these things, but also because he does them in the way in which just and moderate people do them. So it is appropriate to say that the just person comes about from doing what is just, and the moderate person from doing what is moderate.Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1105b5-11, trans. Rowe and Broadie

February 27, 2019

polarized rome

We have seen in other contexts Cicero’s attempt to paint the characters of a speech in the sharply contrasting colors of black and white, to reduce a judicial dispute to the simple juxtaposition of antipathetic characters or ways or life, one honorable, upright, in keeping with the mos maiorum, the other its un-Roman antithesis. In this instance, Cicero has aimed his entire speech at creating such a gulf between the Roman state and Catiline and his followers; grey hues, so many of which in reality colored the Catilinarian affair, scarcely enter the picture. The contrast is nowhere more forcefully expressed than in the conclusion to this part of the speech:

“On our side fights modesty, on theirs shamelessness; on our side morality, on theirs debauchery; on ours good faith, on theirs deceit; on ours respect for right, on theirs crime; on ours steadfastness, on theirs madness; on ours honor, on theirs disgrace; on ours self-control, on theirs a surrender to passion; in short, justice, temperance, fortitude, prudence, all the virtues, contend with injustice, extravagance, cowardice, folly, all the vices. In a word, abundance fights against poverty, incorrupt principles against corrupt, sanity against insanity, well-founded hope against general desperation.”James May, Trials of Character (1988), p. 55

January 24, 2019