[7]
Why is
it that we write down memoranda carelessly, that we make up account-books carefully? For
what reason? Because the one is to last a month, the other for ever; these are
immediately expunged those are religiously preserved; these embrace the recollection of
a short time, those pledge the good faith and honesty of a man for ever; these are
thrown away, those are arranged in order. Therefore, no one ever produced memoranda at a
trial; men do produce accounts, and read entries in books.
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge. London. George Bell & Sons. 1903.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.