Quotes by Roman Authors - Page 21

A Woman who is generous with her money is to be praised; not so, if she is generous with her person
Marcus Fabius Quintilianus
[Y]ou are not ashamed of your sin [in committing adultery] because so many men commit it. Man's wickedness is now such that men are more ashamed of chastity than of lechery. Murderers, thieves, perjurers, false witnesses, plunderers and fraudsters are detested and hated by people generally, but whoever will sleep with his servant girl in brazen lechery is liked and admired for it, and people make light of the damage to his soul. And if any man has the nerve to say that he is chaste and faithful to his wife and this gets known, he is ashamed to mix with other men, whose behaviour is not like his, for they will mock him and despise him and say he's not a real man; for man's wickedness is now of such proportions that no one is considered a man unless he is overcome by lechery, while one who overcomes lechery and stays chaste is considered unmanly.
Augustine of Hippo
Crime, once exposed, has no refuge but in audacity.
Tacitus
It's the old headpiece that makes a man, the rest is all rubbish.
Petronius Arbiter
After all, I was once like you are, but being the right sort I got where I am.
Petronius Arbiter
It's easier to get philosophers to agree than clocks.
Seneca
Here is a man whose life and actions the world has already condemned - yet whose enormous fortune...has already brought him acquittal!
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Can't you see that I'm only advising you to beg yourself not to be so dumb?
Petronius Arbiter
But is life really worth so much? Let us examine this; it's a different inquiry. We will offer no solace for so desolate a prison house; we will encourage no one to endure the overlordship of butchers. We shall rather show that in every kind of slavery, the road of freedom lies open. I will say to the man to whom it befell to have a king shoot arrows at his dear ones [Prexaspes], and to him whose master makes fathers banquet on their sons' guts [Harpagus]: 'What are you groaning for, fool?... Everywhere you look you find an end to your sufferings. You see that steep drop-off? It leads down to freedom. You see that ocean, that river, that well? Freedom lies at its bottom. You see that short, shriveled, bare tree? Freedom hangs from it.... You ask, what is the path to freedom? Any vein in your body.
Seneca
How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys which I had once feared to lose..! You drove them from me, you who are the true, the sovereign joy. You drove them from me and took their place.... O Lord my God, my Light, my Wealth, and my Salvation.
Augustine of Hippo
Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Augustine taught that true freedom is not choice or lack of constraint, but being what you are meant to be. Humans were created in the image of God. True freedom, then, is not found in moving away from that image but only in living it out.
Augustine of Hippo
Freedom is a possession of inestimable value.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
He who is brave is free
Seneca
Constant dripping hollows out a stone.
Titus Lucretius Carus
Love conquers all. Let Love then smile at our defeat.
Virgil
it is a higher glory... to stay war itself with a word, than to slay men with the sword, and to procure or maintain peace by peace, not by war.
Augustine of Hippo
A bad peace is worse than war.
Tacitus
In love there are two evils: war and peace.
Horace
In times of war, the law falls s
Marcus Tullius Cicero
How closely flattery resembles friendship! It not only apes friendship, but outdoes it, passing it in the race; with wide-open and indulgent ears it is welcomed and sinks to the depths of the heart, and it is pleasing precisely wherein it does harm.
Seneca
Do they desire to join me in thanksgiving when they hear how, by your gift, I have come close to you, and do they pray for me when they hear how I am held back by my own weight? ...A brotherly mind will love in me what you teach to be lovable, and will regret in me what you teach to be regrettable. This is a mark of a Christian brother's mind, not an outsider's--not that of 'the sons of aliens whose mouth speaks vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of iniquity' (Ps. 143:7 f.). A brotherly person rejoices on my account when he approves me, but when he disapproves, he is loving me. To such people I will reveal myself. They will take heart from my good traits, and sigh with sadness at my bad ones. My good points are instilled by you and are your gifts. My bad points are my faults and your judgements on them. Let them take heart from the one and regret the other. Let both praise and tears ascend in your sight from brotherly hearts, your censers. ...But you Lord...Make perfect my imperfections
Augustine of Hippo
Amicu certus in re incerta cernitur' [A true friend is a friend when in difficulty]
Quintus Ennius
Because thou writest me often, I thank thee ... Never do I receive a letter from thee, but immediately we are together.
Seneca
What madness, to love a man as something more than human! I lived in a fever, convulsed with tears and sighs that allowed me neither rest nor peace of mind. My soul was a burden, bruised and bleeding. It was tired of the man who carried it, but I found no place to set it down to rest. Neither the charm of the countryside nor the sweet scents of a garden could soothe it. It found no peace in song or laughter, none in the company of friends at table or in the pleasures of love, none even in books or poetry. Everything that was not what my friend had been was dull and distasteful. I had heart only for sighs and tears, for in them alone I found some shred of consolation.
Augustine of Hippo
There is no enjoying the possession of anything valuable unless one has someone to share it with
Seneca
The shifts of fortune test the reliability of friends.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Fear looks always on the darker side...
Livy
f you wish to put off all worry, assume that what you fear may happen is certainly going to happen.
Seneca
fear in sooth holds so in check all mortals, becasue thay see many operations go on in earth and heaven, the causes of which they can in no way understand, believing them therefore to be done by power divine. for these reasons when we shall have seen that nothing can be produced from nothing, we shall then more correctly ascertain that which we are seeking, both the elements out of which every thing can be produced and the manner in which every thing can be produced in which all things are done without the hands of the gods.
Titus Lucretius Carus
The only business of the historian is to relate things exactly as they are: this he can never do as long as he is afraid
Lucian of Samosata
The whole of life but labours in the dark.For just as children tremble and fear allIn the viewless dark, so even we at timesDread in the light so many things that beNo whit more fearsome than what children feign,Shuddering, will be upon them in the dark.This terror then, this darkness of the mind,Not sunrise with its flaring spokes of light,Nor glittering arrows of morning can disperse,But only nature's aspect and her law.
Titus Lucretius Carus
Habent sua fata libelli. (Books have their own destinies.)
Terentianus Maurus
distringit librorum multitudo (the abundance of books is distraction)
Seneca
Give up your thirst for books, so that you do not die a grouch.
Marcus Aurelius
Leisure without books is death, and burial of a man alive.
Seneca
For books are more than books, they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
A room without books is like a body without a soul.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Miracles are not contrary to nature but only contrary to what we know about nature.
Augustine of Hippo
A room without books is like a body without a soul.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Miracles are not contrary to nature but only contrary to what we know about nature.
Augustine of Hippo
Brass shines with constant usage, a beautiful dress needs wearing,Leave a house empty, it rots.
Ovid
Time takes no holiday. It does not roll idly by, but through our senses works its own wonders in the mind. Time came and went from one day to the next; in its coming and its passing it brought me other hopes and other memories. [quoted in Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo, p. 54]
Augustine of Hippo
Time obliterates the fictions of opinion and confirms the decisions of nature.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
It's not that we have little time, but more that we waste a good deal of it.
Seneca
The part of life we really live is small.' For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time.
Seneca
The memory of everything is very soon overwhelmed in time.
Marcus Aurelius
Each man is the architect of his own fortune.
Appius Claudius Caecus
The face is the mirror of the mind, and eyes without speaking confess the secrets of the heart.
Jerome
Sine doctrina vita est quasi mortis imago" [Without learning, life is but the image of death]
Dionysius Cato
I probably felt more resentment for what I personally was to suffer than for the wrong they were doing to anyone and everyone. But at that time I was determined not to put up with badly behaved people more out of my own interest than because I wanted them to become good people.
Augustine of Hippo
Free curiosity has greater power to stimulate learning than rigorous coercion. Nevertheless, the free ranging flux of curiosity is channeled by discipline under Your Law.
Augustine of Hippo
When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men's [children's] minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
If anyone says that the best life of all is to sail the sea, and then adds that I must not sail upon a sea where shipwrecks are a common occurrence and there are often sudden storms that sweep the helmsman in an adverse direction, I conclude that this man, although he lauds navigation, really forbids me to launch my ship.
Seneca
The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.
Augustine of Hippo
Fortune sides with him who dares.
Virgil
Happy is the man who has learned the causes of things.
Virgil
No one should be ashamed to admit that they do not know what they do not know, in case while feigning knowledge, they come to deserve to never know.
Augustine of Hippo