“A trifling debt makes a man your debtor; a large one makes him an enemy.”
Source: Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XIX: On worldliness and retirement, Line 11.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Seneca the Younger225
Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist -4–65 BCRelated quotes
“Better make a weak man your enemy than your friend.”
Josh Billings (1818–1885) American humorist
Affurisms. From Josh Billings: His Sayings (1865)
Muhammad al-Taqi (811–835) ninth of the Twelve Imams of Twelver Shi'ism
[Baqir Sharīf al-Qurashi, The life of Imam Muhammad al-Jawad, Wonderful Maxims and Arts, 2005]
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) American politician, 19th President of the United States (in office from 1877 to 1881)
Diary (13 July 1879)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate
Article for Zeit (20 April 1924), quoted in W. M. Knight-Patterson, Germany. From Defeat to Conquest 1913-1933 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1945), p. 348
1920s
William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925) United States Secretary of State
Principal Speech Against Unconditional Repeal (16 August 1893)
Henry L. Stimson (1867–1950) United States Secretary of War
The Bomb and the Opportunity (March 1946)
“No plan survives the first encounter with your enemy, so why bother to make one?”
Jim C. Hines (1974) American writer
Source: The Goblin Quest Series, Goblin Hero (2007), Chapter 13 (p. 243)
Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist
The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Women & men