Cicero, Lorem Ipsum, and Words that are Still Worth Reading
Yesterday, as I sometimes do, I visited lipsum.com to procure some fake Latin. When I arrived I did a remarkable thing — I read what was there.
What first caught my attention was that the words have their origin some 2000 years ago with a man known as Cicero. For those who don’t know he was one of the most brilliant writers from the Roman era, and I bet he would be thoroughly pleased to know that his words still echo within people’s minds today.
Lorem Ipsum comes from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC. This book is a treatise on the theory of ethics…
The site also has translations of the words that inspired the faux text, and I enjoyed them a lot.
“But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness.
…
The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains.”
November 19th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
[...] long and satisfying happiness, one most forgo the pursuit of pleasure. On this the Dalai Llama and Cicero speak the same words 2000 years apart. Forgo small pleasures now, to receive happiness [...]