Life & Wisdom Quote by Publilius Syrus

A Roman knows better than to romanticize suffering. Publilius Syrus pairs "good health" with "good sense" like two legs of the same table: you can’t live well if either one is missing. The line has the clean snap of a maxim meant for repetition, the kind you can hand to a young man with ambitions and tell him, without sentiment, what actually keeps a life upright.

The intent is practical, almost accountant-like: name the assets that matter before fortune and vanity start dressing up liabilities as virtues. "Good health" isn’t just feeling fine; in a world of unreliable medicine and constant physical risk, it’s a form of silent wealth. "Good sense" isn’t IQ or cleverness; it’s judgment, restraint, the ability to read a situation and not be lured by impulses that look like freedom and end as punishment. Syrus doesn’t praise heroics or brilliance. He praises durability.

The subtext is a warning against Rome’s favorite self-myths: that glory compensates for bodily ruin, that sharp rhetoric can outrun consequences, that appetite is the same as power. By calling these "blessings", he also nods to contingency. You can cultivate prudence, but you can’t fully control illness, accident, or the political whims that could break you. The line is a small act of moral triage: before you chase status, protect the baseline conditions that make any status usable. Rome loved spectacle; Syrus quietly insists on the infrastructure of a life.