Cicero on Life

“Natura dedit usuram vitæ tanquam pecuniæ nulla præstitua die. Nature has lent us life at interest, like money, and has fixed no day for its payment.”

“Nemo parum diu vixit, qui virtuis perfectæ perfecto functus est munere. No one has lived a short life who has performed its duties with unblemished character.”

“Brevis a natura nobis vita data est; at memoria bene reditæ vitæ sempiterna. The life given us by nature is short; but the memory of a well-spent life is eternal.”

“O philosophy, life’s guide! O searcher-out of virtue and expeller of vices! What could we and every age of men have been without thee? Thou hast produced cities; thou hast called men scattered about into the social enjoyment of life.”

“How few philosophers are to be found who are such in character, so ordered in soul and in life, as reason demands; who regard their teaching not as a display of knowledge, but as the rule of life; who obey themselves, and submit to their own decrees!”

“Life's race-course is fixed; Nature has only a single path and that path is run but once, and to each stage of existence has been allotted its own appropriate quality; so that the weakness of childhood, the impetuosity of youth, the seriousness of middle life, the maturity of old age—each bears some of Nature's fruit, which must be garnered in its own season.”

“Undoubtedly, as it seems to me at least, satiety of all pursuits causes satiety of life. Boyhood has certain pursuits: does youth yearn for them? Early youth has its pursuits: does the matured or so-called middle stage of life need them? Maturity, too, has such as are not even sought in old age, and finally, there are those suitable to old age. Therefore as the pleasures and pursuits of the earlier periods of life fall away, so also do those of old age; and when that happens man has his fill of life and the time is ripe for him to go.”