[Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations by Marcus Tullius Cicero]@TWC D-Link bookCicero’s Tusculan Disputations BOOK IV 16/54
Regret is when one eagerly wishes to see a person who is absent.
Now here they have a distinction; so that with them regret is a lust conceived on hearing of certain things reported of some one, or of many, which the Greeks call [Greek: kategoremata], or predicaments; as that they are in possession of riches and honors: but want is a lust for those very honors and riches.
But these definers make intemperance the fountain of all these perturbations; which is an absolute revolt from the mind and right reason--a state so averse to all rules of reason that the appetites of the mind can by no means be governed and restrained.
As, therefore, temperance appeases these desires, making them obey right reason, and maintains the well-weighed judgments of the mind, so intemperance, which is in opposition to this, inflames, confounds, and puts every state of the mind into a violent motion.
Thus, grief and fear, and every other perturbation of the mind, have their rise from intemperance. X.Just as distempers and sickness are bred in the body from the corruption of the blood, and the too great abundance of phlegm and bile, so the mind is deprived of its health, and disordered with sickness, from a confusion of depraved opinions that are in opposition to one another.
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