Sunday, April 15, 2007

Doctor's orders:

"Scorn pain: either it will go away, or you will." -Seneca

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Crazy freaking Roman Stoics.

They can have my share of pain.

Anonymous said...

This is my tattoo parlor mantra.

Hey, it got me through six sessions, half of them on the underside of my arm.

Anonymous said...

One of the people who took his advice seriously was mentioned in a magazine a couple of years ago.

His skull was excavated from a 1st century AD burial. He had all of his teeth except for one canine. But, being rich, he could afford to have it replaced. An iron canine (!) was matched to his missing tooth exactly & inserted into his jaw like one of our modern implants. He lived for years afterward because the bone had grown around the iron tooth, anchoring it.

Too bad they stopped making Romans like that. Might've kept the pesky Germans on their side of the Rhine.

Get better.

J.R.Shirley said...

Eh. Another famous quote is "Whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stronger." One of the borderline morons I used to serve with had the temerity to spout this plattitude to me.

I said, "So, if I broke your arms and legs, you'd be stronger, even though you'd be lying on the ground, and could do absolutely nothing to stop me from beating the crap out of you?"

Him: "(Startled silence)...You're an asshole, man!"

But I'm right, dillweed. Now stop breathing my air.

Anonymous said...

Hang in there, tuf girl.

dr mac

Francis W. Porretto said...

Florence King, when she was a freelance book reviewer, was once asked by one of her employers to review a book she described as "a brave-battle-with-cancer book." She sent it back to him immediately with the Seneca quote attached. He was so incensed he never hired her again. As Miss King put it in With Charity Toward None, "Got him with a curve ball."

Ah, the benefits of a classical education!