54.
We are not allowed, I maintain, to travel a straight road.
Our parents and our slaves draw us into wrong.
Nobody confines his mistakes to himself; people sprinkle folly among their neighbours, and receive it from them in turn.
For this reason, in an individual, you find the vices of nations, because the nation has given them to the individual.
Each man, in corrupting others, corrupts himself; he imbibes, and then imparts, badness:—the result is a vast mass of wickedness, because the worst in every separate person is concentrated in one mass.
Book: Moral Letters Vol III
Subtitle: Seneca's timeless letters of advice and wisdom.
Author: Seneca
Chapter: On the value of advice
Location: Chapter 94, Section 54
Content:
54.
We are not allowed, I maintain, to travel a straight road.
Our parents and our slaves draw us into wrong.
Nobody confines his mistakes to himself; people sprinkle folly among their neighbours, and receive it from them in turn.
For this reason, in an individual, you find the vices of nations, because the nation has given them to the individual.
Each man, in corrupting others, corrupts himself; he imbibes, and then imparts, badness:—the result is a vast mass of wickedness, because the worst in every separate person is concentrated in one mass.