Cicero (on the Stoics) · 106–43 BCE
On Duties 3.3 — Cicero (on the Stoics)
Translation by Walter Miller (1913)
Cicero (on the Stoics), On Duties 3.3
So, although I once lived amid throngs of people and in the greatest publicity, I am now shunning the sight of the miscreants with whom the world abounds and withdrawing from the public eye as far as I may, and I am often alone. But I have learned from philosophers that among evils one ought not only to choose the least, but also to extract even from these any element of good that they may contain. For that reason, I am turning my leisure to account—though it is not such repose as the man should be entitled to who once brought the state repose from civil strife—and I am not letting this solitude, which necessity and not my will imposes on me, find me idle.
Cite this passage
Cicero (on the Stoics), On Duties 3.3, tr. Walter Miller (1913)
https://whatwouldstoicsdo.com/passage/on-duties/3.3
Cicero, On Duties (De Officiis), tr. Walter Miller (Loeb, 1913). Text: Perseus Digital Library (CC BY-SA 4.0). Sources and licences
In plain English
AI-written notesWhen circumstances force something unwelcome on you, pick the lesser evil and then wring whatever good you can out of it. Cicero, cut off from public life, refuses to let enforced solitude catch him idle and puts the time to use.
Older wording
- “miscreants”
- — wrongdoers or scoundrels
- “repose”
- — rest and peace
Themes and situations
- Adversity and hardship
- Resilience and endurance
- Solitude and retreat
- Acceptance and fate
- Losing a job
- A career setback
- Loneliness
- Feeling life is slipping by
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