For when generosity is not indiscriminate giving, it wins most gratitude and people praise it with more enthusiasm, because goodness of heart in a man of high station becomes the common refuge of everybody.
Cicero explains that thoughtful generosity, rather than indiscriminate giving, earns greater appreciation and establishes a leader's reputation as a public benefactor.
Share
More from Cicero
Such acts of generosity are not to be so highly esteemed as those which are performed with judgment, deliberation, and mature consideration.
But those wars which have glory for their end must be carried on with less bitterness.
So, then, it is truth that is, as it were, the stuff with which this virtue has to deal and on which it employs itself.
For we are all attracted and drawn to a zeal for learning and knowing; and we think it glorious to excel therein, while we count it base and immoral to fall into error, to wander from the truth, to be ignorant, to be led astray.
Other voices in this conversation
