[12]
You ask us, O Gratius, why we are so exceedingly attached to this man. Because he supplies
us with food whereby our mind is refreshed after this noise in the forum, and with rest for
our ears after they have been wearied with bad language. Do you think it possible that we
could find a supply for our daily speeches, when discussing such a variety of matters, unless
we were to cultivate our minds by the study of literature; or that our minds could bear being
kept so constantly on the stretch if we did not relax them by that same study? But I confess
that I am devoted to those studies, let others be ashamed of them if they have buried
themselves in books without being able to produce anything out of them for the common
advantage or anything which may bear the eyes of men and the light. But why need I be ashamed,
who for many years have lived in such a manner as never to allow my own love of tranquillity
to deny me to the necessity or advantage of another or my fondness for pleasure to distract,
or even sleep to delay my attention to such claims?
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1856.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.