Quotes by Roman Authors - Page 22

For it is not needful, to use a common proverb, that one should drink up the ocean who wishes to learn that its water is salt.
Irenaeus of Lyons
There is no one who would not rather appear to know than to be taught.
Marcus Fabius Quintilianus
Let your door stand open to receive Him, unlock your soul to Him, offer Him a welcome in your mind, and then you will see the riches of simplicity, the treasures of peace, the joy of grace. Throw wide the gate of your heart, stand before the sun of the everlasting light...
Ambrose of Milan
For you [God] are infinite and never change. In you 'today' never comes to an end: and yet our 'today' does come to an end in you, because time, as well as everything else, exists in you. If it did not, it would have no means of passing. And since your years never come to an end, for you they are simply 'today'...But you yourself are eternally the same. In your 'today' you will make all that is to exist tomorrow and thereafter, and in your 'today' you have made all that existed yesterday and for ever before.
Augustine of Hippo
All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher.
Titus Lucretius Carus
Bad times, hard times, this is what people keep saying; but let us live well, and times shall be good. We are the times: Such as we are, such are the times.
St. Augustine of Hippo
When you enter a grove peopled with ancient trees, higher than the ordinary, and shutting out the sky with their thickly inter-twined branches, do not the stately shadows of the wood, the stillness of the place, and the awful gloom of this doomed cavern then strike you with the presence of a deity?
Seneca
Rule your mind or it will rule you.
Horace
Happy is the man who has broken the chains which hurt the mind, and has given up worrying once and for all.”"Be patient and tough; one day this pain will be useful to you.
Ovid
You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.
Marcus Aurelius
Write quickly and you will never write well; write well, and you will soon write quickly.
Marcus Fabius Quintilianus
So we must work at our profession and not make anybody else's idleness an excuse for our own. There is no lack of readers and listeners it is for us to produce something worth being written and heard.
Pliny the Younger
And we, too, being called by His will to Christ Jesus, are not justified by ourselves, nor by our own wisdom, or understanding or godliness, or works which we have wrought in holiness of heart; but by that faith through which, from the beginning, Almighty God has justified all men; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Clement of Rome
Life is a misery, death an uncertainty. Suppose it steals suddenly upon me, in what state shall I leave this world? When can I learn what I have here neglected to learn? Or is it true that death will cut off and put an end to all care and all feeling? This is something to be inquired into.But no, this cannot be true. It is not for nothing, it is not meaningless that all over the world is displayed the high and towering authority of the Christian faith. Such great and wonderful things would never have been done for us by God, if the life of the soul were to end with the death of the body. Why then do I delay? Why do I not abandon my hopes of this world and devote myself entirely to the search for God and for the happy life?
Augustine of Hippo
To whom shall I offer this book, young and sprightly,Neat, polished, wide-margined, and finished politely?To you, my Cornelius, whose learning pedantic,Has dared to set forth in three volumes giganticThe history of ages—ye gods, what a labor!—And still to enjoy the small wit of a neighbor.A man who can be light and learned at once, sir,By life's subtle logic is far from a dunce, sir.So take my small book—if it meet with your favor.The passing of years cannot dull its sweet savor.
Catullus
Come boy, and pour for me a cupOf old Falernian. Fill it upWith wine, strong, sparkling, bright, and clear;Our host decrees no water here.Let dullards drink the Nymph's pale brew,The sluggish thin their blood with dew.For such pale stuff we have no use;For us the purple grape's rich juice.Begone, ye chilling water sprite;Here burning Bacchus rules tonight!
Catullus
forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.and perhaps it will be pleasing to have remembered these things one day
Virgil
As wave is driven by wave And each, pursued, pursues the wave ahead, So time flies on and follows, flies, and follows, Always, for ever and new. What was before Is left behind; what never was is now; And every passing moment is renewed.
Ovid
Nothing can dwindle to nothing, as Nature restores one thing from the stuff of another, nor does she allow a birth, without a corresponding death.
Titus Lucretius Carus
Animula vagula blandulaHospes comesque corporisQuae nunc abibis? In LocaPallidula rigida nudulanec ut soles dabis Iocos.Little soul, you charming little wanderer, my body's guest and partner,where are you off to now?somewhere without colour, savage and bare;You'll crack no more of your jokes once you're there.
Hadrian
After I am dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one.
Marcus Porcius Cato
We must make haste then, not only because we are daily nearer to death, but also because the conception of things and the understanding of them cease first.
Marcus Aurelius
That which has died falls not out of the universe. If it stays here, it also changes here, and is dissolved into its proper parts, which are elements of the universe and of thyself. And these too change, and they murmur not".
Marcus Aurelius
Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretence.
Marcus Aurelius
What mancan you show me who places any value on his time, who reckons the worth of each day, who understands that he isdying daily? For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed,Whatever years be behind us are in death's hands.
Seneca
I love the name of honor more than I fear death.
Gaius Julius Caesar
Let the Lord your God be your hope – seek for nothing else from him, but let him himself be your hope. There are people who hope from him riches or perishable and transitory honours, in short they hope to get from God things which are not God himself.
Augustine of Hippo
Human life is under the absolute dominion of two mighty principles, fear and hope, and that any one who can make these serve his ends may be sure of rapid fortune.
Lucian of Samosata
So dry your tears. Fortune has not yet turned her hatred against all your blessings. The storm has not yet broken upon you with too much violence. Your anchors are holding firm and they permit you both comfort in the present, and hope in the future.
Boethius
Una Salus Victis Nullam Sperare Salutem - (Latin - written 19 BC)The only hope for the doomed, is no hope at all...
Virgil
My dear Scipio and Laelius. Men, of course, who have no resources in themselves for securing a good and happy life find every age burdensome. But those who look for all happiness from within can never think anything bad which Nature makes inevitable.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Men who give up the common goal of all things that exist, thereby cease to exist themselves. Some may perhaps think it strange that we say that wicked men, who form the majority of men, do not exist; but that is how it is. I am not trying to deny the wickedness of the wicked; what I do deny is that their existence is absolute and complete existence. Just as you might call a corpse a dead man, but couldn't simply call it a man, so I would agree that the wicked are wicked, but could not agree that they have unqualified existence.
Boethius
It is not the rich man you should properly call happy, but him who knows how to use with wisdom the blessings of the gods, to endure hard poverty, and who fears dishonor worse than death, and is not afraid to die for cherished friends or fatherland.
Horace
No man is happy who does not think himself so.
Marcus Aurelius
Happy the man, and happy he alone,he who can call today his own:he who, secure within, can say,Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.Be fair or foul, or rain or shinethe joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine.Not Heaven itself, upon the past has power,but what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.
Horace
Nothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it.
Boethius
For what prevents us from saying that the happy life is to have a mind that is free, lofty, fearless and steadfast - a mind that is placed beyond the reach of fear, beyond the reach of desire, that counts virtue the only good, baseness the only evil, and all else but a worthless mass of things, which come and go without increasing or diminishing the highest good, and neither subtract any part from the happy life nor add any part to it?A man thus grounded must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys.
Seneca
The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.
Marcus Aurelius
I place my trust in You, O adorable Blood, our Redemption, our regeneration. Fall, drop by drop, into the hearts that have wandered from You and soften their hardness.
Agnes of Rome
True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.
Seneca
Remember it is not you who supports the root, but the root that supports you.
Apostle Paul -- Letter to the Romans
What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?
Apostle Paul -- Letter to the Romans
¿Preguntas cúal es el fundamento de la sabiduría? No gozarte en cosas vanas.
Seneca
As for thy thirst after books, away with it with all speed.
Marcus Aurelius
Huius (sapientis) opus unum est de divinis humanisque verum invenire; ab hac numquam recedit religio, pietas, iustitia ...
Seneca
I am not a ‘wise man,’ nor . . . shall I ever be. And so require not from me that I should be equal to the best, but that I should be better than the wicked. It is enough for me if every day I reduce the number of my vices, and blame my mistakes.
Seneca
No mortal man has ever served at the same time his passions and his best interests.
Sallust
We make Idols of our concepts, but Wisdom is born of wonder
Pope Gregory I
We gaze up at the same stars, the sky covers us all, the same universe encompasses us. What does it matter what practical system we adopt in our search for the truth? Not by one avenue only can we arrive at so tremendous a secret.
Quintus Aurelius Symmachus
he who is greedy is always in want
Horace
We must not only obtain Wisdom: we must enjoy her.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
errare humanum est, sed perseverare diabolicum: 'to err is human, but to persist (in the mistake) is diabolical.
Seneca
I criticize by creation, not by finding fault.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Wise men profit more by fools than fools by wise men.
Marcus Porcius Cato
Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise.
Horace
The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.
Marcus Aurelius
If the gods have determined about me and about the things which must happen to me, they have determined well, for it is not easy even to imagine a deity without forethought; and as to doing me harm, why should they have any desire towards that? For what advantage would result to them from this or to the whole, which is the special object of their providence? But if they have not determined about me individually, they have certainly determined about the whole at least, and the things which happen by way of sequence in this general arrangement I ought to accept with pleasure and to be content with them.
Marcus Aurelius
What do I love when I love my God?
Augustine of Hippo
We speak, but it is God who teaches.
Augustine of Hippo
The peace of the celestial city is the perfectly ordered and harmonious enjoyment of God, and of one another in God. (City of God, Book 19)
Augustine of Hippo