Now the end, I take it, is all one, to live at more leisure and at one's
ease: but men do not always take the right way. They often think they
have totally taken leave of all business, when they have only exchanged
one employment for another: there is little less trouble in governing a
private family than a whole kingdom. Wherever the mind is perplexed, it
is in an entire disorder, and domestic employments are not less
troublesome for being less important. Moreover, for having shaken off
the court and the exchange, we have not taken leave of the principal
vexations of life:

"Ratio et prudentia curas,
Non locus effusi late maris arbiter, aufert;"

["Reason and prudence, not a place with a commanding view of the
great ocean, banish care."--Horace, Ep., i. 2.]

ambition, avarice, irresolution, fear, and inordinate desires, do not
leave us because we forsake our native country:

"Et
Post equitem sedet atra cura;"

["Black care sits behind the horse man."
--Horace, Od., iii. 1, 40].

they often follow us even to cloisters and philosophical schools; nor
deserts, nor caves, hair-shirts, nor fasts, can disengage us from them:

"Haeret lateri lethalis arundo."