Dying Every Day Quotes

“No matter how many men you kill, you can't kill your successor.”
― Seneca, Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero

“But is life really worth so much? Let us examine this; it's a different inquiry. We will offer no solace for so desolate a prison house; we will encourage no one to endure the overlordship of butchers. We shall rather show that in every kind of slavery, the road of freedom lies open. I will say to the man to whom it befell to have a king shoot arrows at his dear ones [Prexaspes], and to him whose master makes fathers banquet on their sons' guts [Harpagus]: 'What are you groaning for, fool?... Everywhere you look you find an end to your sufferings. You see that steep drop-off? It leads down to freedom. You see that ocean, that river, that well? Freedom lies at its bottom. You see that short, shriveled, bare tree? Freedom hangs from it.... You ask, what is the path to freedom? Any vein in your body.”
― Seneca, Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero

“Diogenes the Cynic was an ascetic by choice. He rejected his family's bourgeois status, got himself exiled from his native city, and went about in a threadbare cloak with only the barest possessions, a bag for his crust of bread and a cup for scooping water from fountains. When one day he saw a boy drinking from his hands, he smashed the cup, disgusted by his own love of luxury.”
― James Romm, Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero

“Life, properly regarded, is only a journey toward death”
― James Romm, Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero

“The Rome he has been trained to serve, the Rome of Augustus and Germanicus, was gone. In its place stood Neronopolis, ruled by a megalomaniac brat.”
― James Romm, Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero

“The one to whom nothing was refused, whose tears were always wiped away by an anxious mother, will not abide being offended.
—De Ira 2.21.6”
― Seneca, Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero

“Marcia’s grief, for Seneca, exemplifies a universal human blindness. We assume that we own things—family, wealth, position—whereas we have only borrowed them from Fortune.”
― James Romm, Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero

“Seneca had made the bargain that many good men have made when agreeing to aid bad regimes. On the one hand, their presence strengthens the regime and helps it endure. But their moral influence may also improve the regime's behavior or save the lives of its enemies. For many, this has been a bargain worth making, even if it has cost them—as it may have cost Seneca—their immortal soul.”
― James Romm, Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero

“Let them hate, as long as they fear.”
― James Romm, Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero

“blows. Execution should be only a last, desperate resort, for those who are so morally “ill” that death is, in effect, euthanasia.”
― James Romm, Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero

“But moves made by aging emperors do not always accord with logic.”
― James Romm, Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero

“To fight against an equal is risky; against a higher-up, insane; against someone beneath you, degrading,” Seneca wrote in De Ira. He gave the example of Cato, that Stoic nonpareil who, when spat upon in public by an adversary, merely wiped his face and returned a good-natured quip. If one could not turn a blind eye, one could at least forgive, knowing that all human beings are prone to do wrong.”
― James Romm, Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero

“If you lament a dead son, his crime belongs to the hour in which he was born. A death sentence was passed on him then.”
― James Romm, Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero