Wherefore, if it is your wont to admire my wisdom--and I would that it were worthy of your good opinion and of my own surname of Sapiens--it really consists in the fact that I follow Nature, the best of guides, as I would a god, and am loyal to her commands.
In a philosophical dialogue, Cicero explains his personal approach to wisdom and living in harmony with the natural world.
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Further than this, who fails to see that those promises are not binding which are extorted by intimidation or which we make when misled by false pretences?
What a sorry state of servitude for a virtue--to be pandering to sensual pleasure!
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.
But for all cases we have one rule, with which I desire you to be perfectly familiar: that which seems expedient must not be morally wrong; or, if it is morally wrong, it must not seem expedient.
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