“And if fear wins a majority of the votes, incline in the other direction anyhow, and cease to harass your soul, reflecting continually that most mortals, even when no troubles are actually at hand or are certainly to be expected in the future, become excited and disquieted. No one calls a halt on himself, when he begins to be urged ahead; nor does he regulate his alarm according to the truth. No one says; “The author of the story is a fool, and he who has believed it is a fool, as well as he who fabricated it.” We let ourselves drift with every breeze; we are frightened at uncertainties, just as if they were certain. We observe no moderation. The slightest thing turns the scales and throws us forthwith into a panic.” (Seneca, Letters on Ethics, II, 13)

“First of all, consider whether your proofs of future trouble are sure. For it is more often the case that we are troubled by our apprehensions, and that we are mocked by that mocker, rumour, which is wont to settle wars, but much more often settles individuals. Yes, my dear Lucilius; we agree too quickly with what people say. We do not put to the test those things which cause our fear; we do not examine into them; we blench and retreat just like soldiers who are forced to abandon their camp because of a dust-cloud raised by stampeding cattle, or are thrown into a panic by the spreading of some unauthenticated rumour.” (Seneca, Letters on Ethics, II, 13)

“The list of alien areas with which nostrums have been christened reads like a gazeteer. The hardy soul could dose himself around the world. What combination of diseases, howsoever dire, could hold out against such an international therapeutic arsenal as Bragg’s Arctic Liniment, Hayne’s Arabian Balsam, Bavarian Malt Extract, Brazilian Bitters, Carpathian Bitters, Castilian Bitters, Crimean Bitters, Kennedy’s East India Bitters, Hoofiand’s German Tonic, Good Hope Bitters, Hoofland’s Greek Oil, Buchan’s Hungarian Balsam, Wyncoop’s Iceland Pectoral, Osgood’s Indian Cholagogue, Mecca Compound, Peruvian Syrup, Persian Balm, Roman Eye Balsam, Redding’s Russian Salve, South American Fever and Ague Remedy, Jayne’s Spanish Alterative, Hart’s Swedish Asthma Medicine, Tobias’ Venetian Liniment, and Westphalia Stomach Bitters? To the ordinary American looking for a remedy to cure his aches and pains, distance seemed to lend enchantment.” (James H. Young, The Toadstool Millionaires, 175)

“The rampant specialism, an arbitrary and purely social evil, is not recognized for the crabbed guild spirit that it is, and few are bold enough to say that carving out a small domain and exhausting its soil affords as much a chance for protected irresponsibility as for scientific thoroughness.” (Jacques Barzun, Science: The Glorious Entertainment, 27)

Jacques Barzun & Wendell Hertig Taylor, on Solitary Confinement by Christopher Burney: “A remarkable book and in some ways the most remarkable in this entire Catalogue. It records 18 months’ life in a French prison as a captive of the Gestapo during the Second World War. The observation and recall are not more amazing than the writing and compression of thought. Implications for criminology (especially discussions of capital punishment) and for sociology and education occur on every page. It is enough to mention that the prisoner’s transfer to Buchenwald toward the end of his ordeal struck him as disagreeable because of the threat of sociability.” (A Catalogue of Crime)

Soon I foresee few acres for harrowing
Left once the rich men’s villas have seized the land;
Fishponds that outdo Lake Lucrinus
Everywhere; bachelor place-trees ousting

Vine-loving elms; think myrtle-woods, violet-beds,
All kinds of rare blooms tickling the sense of smell,
Perfumes to drown those olive orchards
Nursed in the past for a farmer’s profit;

Quaint garden-screens, too, woven of laurel-boughs
To parry sunstroke. Romulus never urged
This style of life; rough-bearded Cato
Would have detested the modern fashions.

Small private wealth, large communal property —
So ran the rule then. No one had porticoes
Laid out with ten-foot builder’s measures,
Catching the cool of the northern shadow,

No one in those days sneered at the turf by the
Roadside; yet laws bade citizens beautify
Townships at all men’s cost and quarry
Glorious marble to roof the temples.

(Horace, Ode XV, Book II, Translated by James Michie)

I, who have never been
A generous or a keen
Friend of the gods, must now confess
Myself professor in pure foolishness

And, driven by sheer force
Of proof to alter course,
Must shift my sails and voyage back
To think again upon a different tack.

For Jove, who usually throws
A lightning-flash that goes
Glittering through intervening cloud,
This morning hurtled with his thunder-loud

Chariot and horses through
A sky entirely blue
The brute earth and its restless waters,
Styx and the hateful underworld’s grim quarters,

Even the last known land
Where Atlas takes his stand
Staggered. I see, then, that God can
Change high and low: the unregarded man

Steps up, the proud backs down.
Here Fortune sets a crown,
And there upon her screeching wing
She swoops to dispossess another king.

(Horace, Ode XXXIV, Book I, Translated by James Michie)

Leucon, no one’s allowed to know his fate,
Not you, not me: don’t ask, don’t hunt for answers
In tea leaves or palms. Be patient with whatever comes.
This could be our last winter, it could be many
More, pounding the Tuscan Sea on these rocks:
Do what you must, be wise, cut your vines
And forget about hope. Time goes running, even
As we talk. Take the present, the future’s no one’s affair.

(Horace, Ode XI, Book I, Translated by Burton Raffel)

Don’t ask (we may not know), Leuconoe,
What ends the gods propose for me
Or you. Let Chaldees try
To read the ciphered sky;

Better to bear the outcome, good or bad,
Whether Jove purposes to add
Fresh winters to the past
Or to make this the last

Which now tires out the Tuscan sea and mocks
Its strength with barricades of rocks.
Be wise, strain clear of the wine
And prune the rambling vine

Of expectation. Life’s short. Even while
We talk Time, grudging, runs a mile.
Don’t trust tomorrow’s bough
For Fruit. Pluck this, here, now.

(Horace, Ode XI, Book I, Translated by James Michie)

Deep in fear and in suspicion,
with flustered minds and terrified eyes,
we wear ourselves out figuring how
we might avoid the certain
danger that threatens us so terribly.
And yet we’re mistaken, that’s not it ahead:
the news was wrong
(or we didn’t hear it; or didn’t get it right).
But a disaster that we never imagined
suddenly, shatteringly breaks upon us,
and unprepared — no time left now — we are swept away.

(Translated by Daniel Mendelsohn)