Nihil admirari (or "Nil admirari") is a

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

phrase. It means "''to be surprised by nothing''", or in the imperative, "''Let nothing astonish you''".

Origin

Marcus Tullius Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the estab ...

argues that real sapience consists of preparing oneself for all possible incidents and not being surprised by anything, using as an example

Anaxagoras Anaxagoras (; grc-gre, Ἀναξαγόρας, ''Anaxagóras'', "lord of the assembly"; 500 – 428 BC) was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. Born in Clazomenae at a time when Asia Minor was under the control of the Persian Empire, ...

, who, when informed about the death of his son, said, "''Sciebam me genuisse mortalem''" (''I knew that I begot a mortal'').

Horace Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 – 27 November 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his ' ...

and

Seneca Seneca may refer to: People and language * Seneca (name), a list of people with either the given name or surname * Seneca people, one of the six Iroquois tribes of North America ** Seneca language, the language of the Seneca people Places Extrat ...

refer to similar occurrences and admired such moral fortitude.

"Marvel at nothing" – that is perhaps the one and only thing that can make a man happy and keep him so.

Nietzsche wrote that in this proposition the ancient philosopher "sees the whole of philosophy", opposing it to

Schopenhauer Arthur Schopenhauer ( , ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work ''The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the prod ...

's ''admirari id est philosophari'' (to marvel is to philosophize).

References

External link

{{Commonscatinline Latin words and phrases