Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Bhakti
“I do not wish to be a king; I am not anxious to be rich; I decline military command; I detest fornication; I am not impelled by an insatiable love of gain to go to sea; I do not contend for chaplets; I am free from a mad thirst for fame; I despise death; I am superior to every kind of disease; grief does not consume my soul.”
Original: (la) Regnare nolo: ditescere non libet: prae turam recuso, scortationem odi: navigare ob insatiabilem avaritiam non cupio: de coronis consequendis non dimico: liber sum ab insana gloria cupiditate: mortem contemno: guovis morbi genere superior sum: maror animum non peredit.
Source: Address to the Greeks, Chapter XI, as translated by J. E. Ryland
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Tatian 14
Syrian writer 120–180Related quotes
“If I am Sophocles, I am not mad; and if I am mad, I am not Sophocles.”
Vit. Anon, page 64 (Plumptre's Trans.).
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Babak Khorramdin's letter to his son, rejecting the caliph’s amnesty message, quoted by Al-Tabari, cited in "BĀBAK ḴORRAMI" at Encyclopaedia Iranica http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/babak-korrami