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Minor Dialogues, Together With the Dialogue on Clemency

THE FIRST BOOK OF THE DIALOGUES OF L. ANNAEUS SENECA, ADDRESSED TO LUCILIUS. “WHY, WHEN A PROVIDENCE EXISTS, ANY MISFORTUNES BEFALL GOOD MEN;” OR, “OF PROVIDENCE”

Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition Seneca, Lucius Annaeus and Stewart, Aubrey

Source notes

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[7] The lines occur in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, ii. 63. Phoebus is telling Phaethon how to drive the chariot of the Sun.
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[8] Compare Walter Scott: “All. . . . must have felt that but for the dictates of religion, or the natural recoil of the mind from the idea of dissolution, there have been times when they would have been willing to throw away life as a child does a broken toy. I am sure I know one who has often felt so. O God! what are we?—Lords of nature?—Why, a tile drops from a house-top, which an elephant would not feel more than a sheet of pasteboard, and there lies his lordship. Or something of inconceivably minute origin, the pressure of a bone, or the inflammation of a particle of the brain takes place, and the emblem of the Deity destroys himself or some one else. We hold our health and our reason on terms slighter than any one would desire, were it in their choice, to hold an Irish cabin.”—Lockhart’s Life of Sir Walter Scott, vol. vii., p. 11.

Source attribution

Minor Dialogues, Together With the Dialogue on Clemency, Project Gutenberg eBook #64576

CONTENTS. THE SECOND BOOK OF THE DIALOGUES OF L. ANNAEUS SENECA, ADDRESSED TO SERENUS. “THAT THE WISE MAN CAN NEITHER RECEIVE INJURY NOR INSULT,” OR, AN ESSAY ON THE FIRMNESS OF THE WISE MAN.