1It is long since I took a book in hand or a pen, long since I knew what leisure is, what rest is, what, in short, is that idle but pleasant state of doing nothing and being nothing: so much do the many affairs of my friends keep me from either retiring or studying. 2For no studies are worth so much that the duty of friendship should be abandoned, which those very studies teach must be most scrupulously preserved. 2Farewell.
Lectitō › Pliny the Younger › Letters, Book 8
Pliny · Epistulae VIII
Pliny, Letter 8.9
Friends' business crowds out study
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Pliny, Epistulae VIII. Latin text: the Perseus digital text of Pliny's Letters, public domain; digital text from the Perseus Digital Library, CC BY-SA. Word analysis: drafted by our own tagger (trained on the hand-checked texts on this site), with every doubtful word checked by hand. English translation and section titles: written for this app, each checked against the Latin by a second reader.