Quotes by Roman Authors - Page 12

There is nothing in the world so much admired as a man who knows how to bear unhappiness with courage.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
He who is greedy is always in want.
Horace
No one is content with his own lot.
Horace
Our life is what our thoughts make it.
Marcus Aurelius
It's not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It's because we dare not venture that they are difficult.
Seneca
Each day provides its own gifts.
Martial
Fear betrays unworthy souls.
Virgil
Honor is the reward of virtue.
Cicero
Namque pauci libertatem, pars magna iustos dominos volunt.(Few men desire freedom, the greater part desire just masters.)
Sallust
Be content with what you are and wish not change not dread your last day not long for it.
Martial
We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learned to bear its ills without being overcome by them.
Juvenal
Every visible thing in this world is put in the charge of an Angel.
Augustine of Hippo
You will live wisely if you are happy in your lot.
Horace
He who strikes terror into others is himself in continual fear.
Claudian
It is human to err but it is devilish to remain willfully in error.
Saint Augustine
You are not the mind itself. For You are the Lord God of the mind. All these things are liable to change, but You remain immutable above all things.
Augustine of Hippo
You never go away from us, yet we have difficulty in returning to You. Come, Lord, stir us up and call us back. Kindle and seize us. Be our fire and our sweetness. Let us love. Let us run.
Augustine of Hippo
Wealth is the slave of a wise man. The master of a fool
Seneca
It is more easy to get a favor from fortune than to keep it.
Publilius Syrus
His knowledge is not like ours, which has three tenses: present, past, and future. God's knowledge has no change or variation.
Augustine of Hippo
Only a mind that is deeply stirred can utter something noble and beyond the power of others.
Seneca
True inner righteousness does not judge according to custom but by the measure of the most perfect law of God Almighty by which the mores of various places and times were adapted to those places and times.
Augustine of Hippo
After I am dead I would rather have men ask why Cato has no monument than why he had one.
Cato the Elder
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
There is no such thing as pure pleasure some anxiety always goes with it.
Ovid
Say not always what you know, but always know what you say.
Claudius
Your laugh is of the sardonic kind.
Caius Sempronius Gracchus
If only every man would make proper use of his strength and do his utmost he need never regret his limited ability.
Cicero
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
What a tale he's told, what a bitter bowl of war he's drunk to the dregs.
Virgil
Each day should be passed as though it were our last.
Publilius Syrus
Gladly accept the gifts of the present hour.
Horace
Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on to say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into the world?' The student of nature will only laugh at you; just as a carpenter or a shoemaker would laugh, if you found fault with the shavings and scraps from their work which you saw in the shop. Yet they, at least, have somewhere to throw their litter; whereas Nature has no such out-place. That is the miracle of her workmanship: that in spite of this self-limitation, she nevertheless transmutes into herself everything that seems worn-out or old or useless, and re-fashions it into new creations, so as never to need either fresh supplies from without, or a place to discard her refuse. Her own space, her own materials and her own skill are sufficient for her.
Marcus Aurelius
Woman, the child of so many tears shall never perish.
Ambrose of Milan
Cessation of work is not accompanied by cessation of expenses.
Cato the Elder
Dig within. Within is the wellspring of Good; and it is always ready to bubble up, if you just dig.
Marcus Aurelius
Can human folly harbour a more arrogant or ungrateful thought than the notion that whereas God makes man beautiful in body, man makes himself pure in heart?
Augustine of Hippo
Time heals what reason cannot.
Seneca
Faith is to believe what we do not see the reward of this faith is to see what we believe.
Saint Augustine
Time discovered truth.
Seneca
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
Whether they give or refuse women are glad to have been asked.
Ovid
Do not disturb yourself by picturing your life as a whole; do not assemble in your mind the many and varied troubles which have come to you in the past and will come again in the future, but ask yourself with regard to every present difficulty: 'What is there in this that is unbearable and beyond endurance?' You would be ashamed to confess it! And then remind yourself that it is not the future or what has passed that afflicts you, but always the present, and the power of this is much diminished if you take it in isolation and call your mind to task if it thinks that it cannot stand up to it when taken on its own.
Marcus Aurelius
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
Lord Jesus, don't let me lie when I say that I love you...and protect me, for today I could betray you.
Augustine of Hippo
Faith is to believe what we do not see and the reward of this faith is to see what we believe.
St. Augustine
Crime, once exposed, has no refuge but in audacity.
Tacitus
Count your years and you'll be ashamed to be wanting and working for exactly the same things as you wanted when you were a boy. Of this one thing make sure against your dying day - that your faults die before you do. Have done with those unsettled pleasures, which cost one dear - they do one harm after they're past and gone, not merely when they're in prospect. Even when they're over, pleasures of a depraved nature are apt to carry feelings of dissatisfaction, in the same way as a criminal's anxiety doesn't end with the commission of the crime, even if it's undetected at the time. Such pleasures are insubstantial and unreliable; even if they don't do one any harm, they're fleeting in character. Look around for some enduring good instead. And nothing answers this description except what the spirit discovers for itself within itself. A good character is the only guarantee of everlasting, carefree happiness. Even if some obstacle to this comes on the scene, its appearance is only to be compared to that of clouds which drift in front of the sun without ever defeating its light.
Seneca
And so when you see a man often wearing the robe of office, when you see one whose name is famous in the Forum, do not envy him; those things are bought at the price of life. They will waste all their years, in order that they may have one year reckoned by their name.
Seneca
Must this with farce and folly rack myhead unpunish'd ? that with sing-song,Whine me dead?
Juvenal
Thou shouldst eat to live not live to eat.
Cicero
Death smiles at us all, all a man can do is smile back.
Marcus Aurelius
Do not pluck the beard of a dead lion.
Martial
But perhaps there are insensitive hearts, still incapable of receiving this Light because the weight of their sins prevents them from seeing it. Let them not imagine that they Light is absent because they do not see it, for on account of their sins they are in darkness. ‘And the Light shone in the darkness, and the darkness understood it not’ (Jn 1:5). Therefore, Brothers, like the blind man exposed to the sun, the sun being present to him but he being absent from the sun, so the insensitive one, the sinner, the impious has a blind heart.
Augustine of Hippo
Learn whom God has ordered you to be, and in what part of human affairs you have been placed.
Persius
For as the same fire causes gold to glow brightly, and chaff to smoke; and under the same flail the straw is beaten small, while the grain is cleansed; and as the lees are not mixed with the oil, though squeezed out of the vat by the same pressure, so the same violence of affliction proves, purges, clarifies the good, but damns, ruins, exterminates the wicked. And thus it is that in the same affliction the wicked detest God and blaspheme, while the good pray and praise.
Augustine of Hippo
When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love ...
Marcus Aurelius
Don't ask of your friends what you yourself can do.
Quintus Ennius
Poetry is the Devil's wine.
St. Augustine
Never does Nature say one thing and Wisdom another.
Juvenal