Quotes by Roman Authors - Page 14

He who falls, falls by his own will; and he who stands, stands by God's will.
Augustine of Hippo
Having appeared at the end of the first creation, man [and women] stand at the beginning of the second, since the world is transfigured through [them].
St. Justin
So, if you don't summon a book and a light before dawn,If you don't set your mind on honest aims and pursuits,On waking, you'll be tortured by envy or lust.Why so quick to remove a speck from your eye, whenIf it's your mind, you put off the cure till next year?Who's started has half finished: dare to be wise: begin!
Horace
Do not be ashamed of help.
Marcus Aurelius
Let us cherish and love old age; for it is full of pleasure if one knows how to use it. Fruits are most welcome when almost over; youth is most charming at its close; the last drink delights the toper, the glass which souses him and puts the finishing touch on his drunkenness. Each pleasure reserves to the end the greatest delights which it contains. Life is most delightful when it is on the downward slope, but has not yet reached the abrupt decline.
Seneca
Just as apples when unripe are torn from trees, but when ripe and mellow drop down, so it is violence that takes life from young men, ripeness from old. This ripeness is so delightful to me that, as I approach nearer to death, I seem, as it were, to be sighting land, and to be coming to port at last after a long voyage.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
We must stand up against old age and make up for its drawbacks by taking pains. We must fight it as we should an illness. We must look after our health, use moderate exercise, take just enough food and drink to recruit, but not to overload, our strength. Nor is it the body alone that must be supported, but the intellect and soul much more.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
The problem, Paulinus, is not that we have a short life, but that we waste time. Life is long and there is enough of it for satisfying personal accomplishments if we use our hours well. But when time is squandered in the pursuit of pleasure or in vain idleness, when it is spent with no real purpose, the finality of death fast approaches and it is only then, when we are forced to, that we, at last, take a good hard look at how we have spent our life- just as we become aware that it is ending. Thus the time we are given is not brief, but we make it so. We do not lack time; on the contrary, there is so much of it that we waste an awful lot
Seneca the elder
And do you know why we have not the power to attain this Stoic ideal? It is because we refuse to believe in our power. Nay, of a surety, there is something else which plays a part: it is because we are in love with our vices; we uphold them and prefer to make excuses for them rather than shake them off. We mortals have been endowed with sufficient strength by nature, if only we use this strength, if only we concentrate our powers and rouse them all to help us or at least not to hinder us. The reason is unwillingness, the excuse, inability.
Seneca
A guilty person sometimes has the luck to escape detection, but never to feel sure of it.
Seneca
Where there is unity, there is always victory
Publilius Syrus
And in the case of superior things like stars, we discover a kind of unity in separation. The higher we rise on the scale of being, the easier it is to discern a connection even among things separated by vast distances.
Marcus Aurelius
Capture your reader, let him not depart, from dull beginnings that refuse to start
Horace
Mortal, what hast thou of such grave concernThat thou indulgest in too sickly plaints?Why this bemoaning and beweeping death?For if thy life aforetime and behindTo thee was grateful, and not all thy goodWas heaped as in sieve to flow awayAnd perish unavailingly, why not,Even like a banqueter, depart the hall,Laden with life?
Titus Lucretius Carus
We are members of one great body, planted by nature…. We must consider that we were born for the good of the whole
Seneca
Salvation: to see each thing for what it is— its nature and its purpose.To do only what is right, say only what is true, without holding back.What else could it be but to live life fully— to pay out goodnesslike the rings of a chain, without the slightest gap.
Marcus Aurelius
Nūllum magnum ingenium sine mixtūrā dēmentiae fuitNo great talent without an element of madness
Seneca
Only a mind that is deeply stirred can utter something noble and beyond the power of others.
Seneca
As far as you can, get into the habit of asking yourself in relation to any action taken by another: "What is his point of reference here?" But begin with yourself: examine yourself first.
Marcus Aurelius
Accustom yourself not to be disregarding of what someone else has to say: as far as possible enter into the mind of the speaker.
Marcus Aurelius
For out of the perverse will came lust, and the service of lust ended in habit, and habit, not resisted, became necessity.
Augustine of Hippo
This disease of curiosity.
Augustine of Hippo
Those wars are unjust which are undertaken without provocation. For only a war waged for revenge or defense can be just.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.
Marcus Aurelius
Out here in Amish. Smokin big doinks in Amish. Gang.
Pope Leo III
Oh, God, to know you is life. To serve You is freedom. To praise you is the soul's joy and delight. Guard me with the power of Your grace here and in all places. Now and at all times, forever. Amen.
Augustine of Hippo
It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested. But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing.
Seneca
A man’s worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions.
Marcus Aurelius
So the starry sky turns round like a millstone, always bringing some trouble, and men being born or dying.
Petronius Arbiter
If nature has composed the human body so that in its proportions the seperate individual elements answer to the total form, then the Ancients seem to have had reason to decide that bringing their creations to full completion likewise required a correspondence bewteen the measure of individual elements and the appearance of the work as a whole.
Vitruvius
Must this with farce and folly rack myhead unpunish'd ? that with sing-song,Whine me dead?
Juvenal
Devils so work that things which are not, appear to men as if they were real.
Lactantius
They see nothing indecent in sexual intercourse, whether heterosexual or homosexual, and indulge in it quite openly, in full view of everyone. The only exception was Socrates, who was always swearing that his relations with young men were purely Platonic, but nobody believed him for a moment, and Hyacinthus and Narcissus gave first-hand evidence to the contrary.
Lucian of Samosata
But nothing will help quite so much as just keeping quiet, talking with other people as little as possible, with yourself as much as possible. For conversation has a kind of charm about it, an insinuating and insidious something that elicits secrets from us just like love or liquor. Nobody will keep the things he hears to himself, and nobody will repeat just what he hears and no more. Neither will anyone who has failed to keep a story to himself keep the name of his informant to himself. Every person without exception has someone to whom he confides everything that is confided to himself. Even supposing he puts some guard in his garrulous tongue and is content with a single pair of ears, he will still be the creator of a host of later listeners – such is the way in which what was but a little while before a secret becomes common rumor.
Seneca
From the errors of others, a wise man corrects his own.
Publilius Syrus
We should live, my Lesbia, and loveAnd value all the talk of stricterOld men at a single penny.Suns can set and rise again;For us, once our brief light has set,There's one unending night for sleeping.Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred,Then another thousand, then a second hundred,Then still another thousand, then a hundred;Then, when we've made many thousands,We'll muddle them so as not to knowOr lest some villain overlook usKnowing the total of our kisses.(Translated by Guy Lee)
Catullus
To show resentment at a reproach is to acknowledge that one may have deserved it.
Tacitus
It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not eny anyone or anything. Love never boasts and it's never proud. Love is not rude, it's not self serving, self absorbed or conceited. Love is no t easily provoked to anger. It doesn't hold grudges nor does it keep records of who was right and who was wrong. Love does not consult with evil instead it rejoices in the truth. Love always protects. Love always trust. Love always hopes. Love always perseveres. And love never fails.
Apostle Paul
So you must not think a man has lived long because he has white hair and wrinkles: he has not lived long, just existed long. For suppose you should think that a man had had a long voyage who had been caught in a raging storm as he left harbour, and carried hither and thither and driven round and round in a circle by the rage opposing winds. He did not have a long voyage, just a long tossing about.
Seneca
Whatever this is that I am, it is a little flesh and breath, and the ruling part. Throw away thy books; no longer distract thyself: it is not allowed; but as if thou wast now dying, despise the flesh; it is blood and bones and a network, a contexture of nerves, veins, and arteries. See the breath also, what kind of a thing it is, air, and not always the same, but every moment sent out and again sucked in. The third then is the ruling part: consider thus: Thou art an old man; no longer let this be a slave, no longer be pulled by the strings like a puppet to unsocial movements, no longer be either dissatisfied with thy present lot, or shrink from the future.
Marcus Aurelius
This was how Dinocrates, recommended only by his good looks and dignified carriage, came to be so famous. But as for me, Emperor, nature has not given me stature, age has marred my face, and my strength is impaired by ill health.
Vitruvius Pollio
Nemo enim est tam senex qui se annum non putet posse vivere.(No one is so old as to think that he cannot live one more year.)
Marcus Tullius Cicero
No matter how many men you kill, you can't kill your successor.
Seneca
In the make-up of human beings, intelligence counts for more than our hands, and that is our true strength.
Ovid
if we are wayfarers who want to return home, then we must see the world as a means of transportation (terestibus vel marinis vehiculis) and always remember to distinguish the means and ends.
Augustine of Hippo
Every good man resists others in those points in which he resists himself.
Augustine of Hippo
It is in your own power to maintain the beauty of your soul, or to be a decent human being.
Marcus Aurelius
There are no snares more dangerous than those which lurk under the guise of duty or the name of relationship.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Most powerful is he who has himself in his power.
Seneca
I hate and love. And why, perhaps you’ll ask.I don’t know: but I feel, and I’m tormented.
Catullus
He has half the deed done who has made a beginning.
Horace
There is a certain pleasure in weeping
Ovid
What a tale he's told, what a bitter bowl of war he's drunk to the dregs.
Virgil
You are unfortunate in my judgment, for you have never been unfortunate. You have passed through life with no antagonist to face you; no one will know what you were capable of, not even you yourself.
Seneca
It is regret for the absence of his loved one which causes a mourner to grieve: yet it is clear that this in itself is bearable enough; for we do not weep at their being absent or intending to be absent during their lifetime, although when they leave our sight we have no more pleasure in them. What tortures us, therefore, is an idea.
Seneca
Each of us bears his own Hell.
Virgil
And when we say also that the Word, who is the first-birth of God, was produced without sexual union, and that He, Jesus Christ, our Teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter. For you know how many sons your esteemed writers ascribed to Jupiter: Mercury, the interpreting word and teacher of all; Aesculapius, who, though he was a great physician, was struck by a thunderbolt, and so ascended to heaven; and Bacchus too, after he had been torn limb from limb; and Hercules, when he had committed himself to the flames to escape his toils; and the sons of Leda, and Dioscuri; and Perseus, son of Danae; and Bellerophon, who, though sprung from mortals, rose to heaven on the horse Pegasus. For what shall I say of Ariadne, and those who, like her, have been declared to be set among the stars? And what of the emperors who die among yourselves, whom you deem worthy of deification, and in whose behalf you produce some one who swears he has seen the burning Caesar rise to heaven from the funeral pyre? And what kind of deeds are recorded of each of these reputed sons of Jupiter, it is needless to tell to those who already know. This only shall be said, that they are written for the advantage and encouragement of youthful scholars; for all reckon it an honourable thing to imitate the gods. But far be such a thought concerning the gods from every well-conditioned soul, as to believe that Jupiter himself, the governor and creator of all things, was both a parricide and the son of a parricide, and that being overcome by the love of base and shameful pleasures, he came in to Ganymede and those many women whom he had violated and that his sons did like actions. But, as we said above, wicked devils perpetrated these things. And we have learned that those only are deified who have lived near to God in holiness and virtue; and we believe that those who live wickedly and do not repent are punished in everlasting fire.
Justin Martyr
The gates of hell are open night and day;Smooth the descent, and easy is the way:But to return, and view the cheerful skies,In this the task and mighty labor lies.
Virgil
Facilis descensus Averno:Noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis;Sed revocare gradium superasque evadere ad auras,Hoc opus, hic labor est.(The gates of Hell are open night and day;Smooth the descent, and easy is the way:But to return, and view the cheerful skies,In this task and mighty labor lies.)
Virgil