The Tusculan Disputations consist of five books, each on a particular theme: On the contempt of death; On pain; On grief; On emotional disturbances; and whether Virtue alone is sufficient for a happy life.

[3] Her loss afflicted Cicero to such a degree that he abandoned all public business and left the city retiring to Asterra, which was a country house that he had near Antium.

The Tusculanae Disputationes consist of five books: The purpose of Cicero's lectures is to fortify the mind with practical and philosophical lessons adapted to the circumstances of life, to elevate us above the influence of all its passions and pains.

Reliquorum sententiae spem adferunt, si te hoc forte delectat, posse animos, cum e corporibus excesserint, in caelum quasi in domicilium suum pervenire.

Cicero offers largely Platonist arguments for the soul's immortality, and its ascent to the celestial regions where it will traverse all space—receiving, in its boundless flight, infinite enjoyment.

Cicero argues that its sufferings may be overcome, not by the use of Epicurean maxims,—"Short if severe, and light if long," but by fortitude and patience; and he censures those philosophers who have represented pain in too formidable colours, and reproaches those poets who have described their heroes as yielding to its influence.

[14] People have a false estimate of the causes of grief: deficiencies in wisdom and virtue, which ought to be the objects of the profoundest sorrow, occasioning less regret than is produced by comparatively slight disappointments or losses.

These Cicero classes under the four Stoic divisions: grief (including forms such as envy), fear, excessive gladness, and immoderate desire.

[8] The Tusculan Disputations is the locus classicus of the legend of the Sword of Damocles,[16] as well as of the sole mention of cultura animi as an agricultural metaphor for human culture.

The rhetor's theme De contemptu mundi, on the contempt of the world, was taken up by Boethius in the troubled closing phase of Late Antiquity and by Bernard of Cluny in the first half of the 12th century.

[citation needed] Thomas Jefferson included the "Tusculan questions", along with Cicero's De Officiis, in his list of recommendations to Robert Skipwith of books for a general personal library.