Familiar Quotations / A Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to / Their Sources in Ancient and Modern Literature

by Unknown

Frag. 440.

Footnotes

[707:5] Custom is almost a second nature.—Plutarch: Rules for the Preservation of Health, 18.

[707:6] See Dryden, page [269].

This may have been the original of the well known (but probably post-classical) line, "Quem Jupiter vult perdere, dementat prius." Publius Syrus has, "Stultum facit fortuna quem vult perdere."

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[[708]]

PUBLIUS SYRUS.[708:1]  42 b. c.

(Translation by Darius Lyman. The numbers are those of the translator.)

As men, we are all equal in the presence of death.