How to Be Content
An Ancient Poet's Guide for an Age of Excess
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Narrated by:
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P.J. Ochlan
About this listen
What the Roman poet Horace can teach us about how to live a life of contentment.
What are the secrets to a contented life? One of Rome's greatest and most influential poets, Horace (65-8 BCE) has been cherished for more than 2,000 years not only for his wit, style, and reflections on Roman society, but also for his wisdom about how to live a good life - above all else, a life of contentment in a world of materialistic excess and personal pressures. In How to Be Content, Stephen Harrison, a leading authority on the poet, provides fresh, contemporary translations of poems from across Horace's works that continue to offer important lessons about the good life, friendship, love, and death.
Living during the reign of Rome's first emperor, Horace drew on Greek and Roman philosophy, especially Stoicism and Epicureanism, to write poems that reflect on how to live a thoughtful and moderate life amid mindless overconsumption, how to achieve and maintain true love and friendship, and how to face disaster and death with patience and courage. From memorable counsel on the pointlessness of worrying about the future to valuable advice about living in the moment, these poems, by the man who famously advised us to carpe diem, or "harvest the day", continue to provide brilliant meditations on perennial human problems.
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Seneca was dedicated to Stoicism, and in his essays and letters he explained the stoic position on many fundamental issues: pleasure and the problem of desire, happiness, and contentment; anger, fear, living in the present, how to think for yourself, anxiety and tranquillity, goodness, freedom, trusting the universe; courage, opportunity, cruelty and how to deal with it, friendship, love and trust, death and how to live, learning , chance and fate, time, aspirations, wisdom - and more.
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Odd presentation style
- By Mark on 08-03-08
By: Mark Forstater, and others
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Keats
- A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph
- By: Lucasta Miller
- Narrated by: Sally Scott
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Miller, through Keats’s poetry, brilliantly resurrects and brings vividly to life, the man, the poet in all his complexity and spirit, living dangerously, disdaining respectability and cultural norms, and embracing subversive politics. Keats was a lower-middle-class outsider from a tragic and fractured family, whose extraordinary energy and love of language allowed him to pummel his way into the heart of English literature; a freethinker and a liberal at a time of repression, who delighted in the sensation of the moment.
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A Romantic Life
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By: Lucasta Miller
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Self Reliance
- By: Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Narrated by: Alana Munro
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- Unabridged
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The most thorough statement of one of Emerson's recurrent themes, the need for each individual to avoid conformity and false consistency, and follow his or her own instincts and ideas. It is the source of one of Emerson's most famous quotations, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." This essay is a considered a watershed moment in which transcendentalism became a major cultural movement. An American classic.
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Don't buy this
- By Leah L on 07-31-16
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The Consolations of Philosophy
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
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Alain de Botton has performed a stunning feat: He has transformed arcane philosophy into something accessible and entertaining, useful and kind. Drawing on the work of six of the world's most brilliant thinkers, de Botton has arranged a panoply of wisdom to guide us through our most common problems.
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Cheering, empathic, helpful
- By Austin on 11-11-09
By: Alain de Botton
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The Iliad & The Odyssey
- By: Homer
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- Length: 28 hrs and 37 mins
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Little is known about the Ancient Greek oral poet Homer, the supposed 8th century BC author of the world-read Iliad and his later masterpiece, The Odyssey. These classic epics provided the basis for Greek education and culture throughout the classical age and formed the backbone of humane education through the birth of the Roman Empire and the spread of Christianity.
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Worth the price, worth the time
- By Sam on 12-31-04
By: Homer
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The Man Who Invented Fiction
- How Cervantes Ushered in the Modern World
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In the early 17th century, a crippled, graying, almost toothless veteran of Spain's wars against the Ottoman Empire published a novel. It was the story of a poor nobleman, his brain addled from studying too many novels of chivalry, who deludes himself that he is a knight errant and sets off on hilarious adventures. That story, Don Quixote, went on to sell more copies than any other book beside the Bible, making its author, Miguel de Cervantes, the single most-read author in human history.
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Very Interesting and Informative, but Poorly Read
- By LCorSMT on 06-21-23
By: William Egginton
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Asian Journals
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- By: Joseph Campbell
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- Unabridged
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At the beginning of his career, Joseph Campbell developed a lasting fascination with the cultures of the Far East, and explorations of Buddhist and Hindu philosophy later became recurring motifs in his vast body of work. However, Campbell had to wait until middle age to visit the lands that inspired him so deeply. In 1954, he took a sabbatical from his teaching position and embarked on a year-long voyage through India, Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and finally Japan.
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What a journey!
- By Anonymous User on 08-11-18
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Chinese Mythology: Gods, Goddesses, Monkeys, Eternal Beings, and More
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- Unabridged
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The sociology and mythology of the Chinese culture has a long, extended history, and the creatures and superpowers in them have often been neglected by western culture. But not for long! As you listen to this gem of an audiobook, you will find all kinds of answers to questions related to Chinese mythology.
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Awesome
- By Anonymous User on 12-04-19
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Papyrus
- The Invention of Books in the Ancient World
- By: Irene Vallejo, Charlotte Whittle - translator
- Narrated by: Sophie Roberts
- Length: 17 hrs and 30 mins
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Long before books were mass-produced, scrolls hand-copied on reeds pulled from the Nile were the treasures of the ancient world. Papyrus is the story of the book’s journey from oral tradition to scrolls to codices, and how that transition laid the very foundation of Western culture. Irene Vallejo evokes the great mosaic of literature in the ancient world, all the while illuminating how ancient ideas about education, censorship, authority, and identity still resonate today.
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Great read
- By Hunter Pechin on 12-15-22
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The Regency Years
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- Narrated by: Chris MacDonnell
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The Victorians are often credited with ushering in our current era, yet the seeds of change were planted in the years before. The Regency (1811-1820) began when the profligate Prince of Wales - the future King George IV - replaced his insane father, George III, as Britain's ruler. Around the regent surged a society steeped in contrasts: evangelicalism and hedonism, elegance and brutality, exuberance and despair. The arts flourished at this time with a showcase of extraordinary writers and painters such as Jane Austen, Lord Byron, the Shelleys, John Constable, and J. M. W. Turner.
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What a time!
- By BK on 06-18-19
By: Robert Morrison
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What listeners say about How to Be Content
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- John B.
- 08-29-23
Frustrating narration
I couldn’t finish the audiobook because the narrator only does one cadence and vocal pattern. He has an incredible and unique voice, but doesn’t quite know how to use it in a wider range of emotion… which seems necessary for a poetic book.
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- Zeek
- 05-22-24
Important ideas agreeably delivered
Horace was not well known to me but I am sure glad we got acquainted. Often Lyrically whimsical and sometimes poignant, these verses more than stand the test of time. The only complaint is this poetic sampling’s brevity.
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- JSJ
- 03-12-23
Philosophy and Poetry
What interested me about this book was the topic (How to Be Content) and how the philosophical ideas were expressed using poetry. There is more than one way to express philosophical ideas. I usually read collections of quotes and essays on philosophy. Poetry is another way of expressing these ideas, and this book is a good introduction to Horace’s philosophy and poetry.
I read this book with the audible version. I don’t read a lot a poetry and the audible helped me get into the book and the flow of poetry as the poet intended when recited. It helped me enjoy the book more and awaken my interest in learning more about Horace and in reading more poetry.
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- Larry W. Patrick
- 07-31-24
A wonderful poetic look at life
Beautiful ancient poems by Horace that help the reader understand the beauty and wonder of life….and death
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- Reginald Jayne
- 09-14-22
Good material, bad audiobook
Material seemed good. The audiobook was lacking. I felt like the narrator was just reading words on a page here without trying to understand what they meant together. I’ll buy print copy.
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