Quotes by Roman Authors - Page 15

They can because they think they can.
Virgil
Oh what times! Oh what standards!
Cicero
What does reason demand of a man? A very easy thing-to live in accord with his own nature.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
[Philosophers] have come to envy the philologist and the mathematician, and they have taken over all the inessential elements in those studies—with the result that they know more about devoting care and attention to their speech than about devoting such attention to their lives.
Seneca
What Saint has ever won his crown without first contending for it?
Jerome
Man is a social animal.
Seneca
And so sovereign Providence has often produced a remarkable effect--evil men making other evil men good. For some, when they think they suffer injustice at the hands of the worst of men, burn with hatred for evil men, and being eager to be different from those they hate, have reformed and become virtuous. It is only the power of God to which evils may also be good, when by their proper use He elicits some good result.
Boethius
So the starry sky turns round like a millstone, always bringing some trouble, and men being born or dying.
Petronius Arbiter
A happy life consists in tranquility of mind.
Cicero
What you are must always displease you if you would attain to that which you are not.
Saint Augustine
Confidence is that feeling by which the mind embarks on great and honorable courses with a sure hope and trust in itself.
Cicero
Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
So it is more useful to watch a man in times of peril, and in adversity to discern what kind of man he is; for then at last words of truth are drawn from the depths of his heart, and the mask is torn off, reality remains.
Titus Lucretius Carus
Will any man despise me? Let him see to it. But I will see to it that I may not be found doing or saying anything that deserves to be despised.
Marcus Aurelius
Better to accept whatever happens.
Horace
The musician who always plays on the same string is laughed at.
Horace
I never admired another's fortune so much that I became dissatisfied with my own.
Cicero
We die as often as we lose a friend.
Publilius Syrus
No one could ever meet death for his country without the hope of immortality.
Cicero
I would appeal to Philip she said but to Philip sober.
Valerius Maximus
Oh this age! How tasteless and ill-bred it is!
Catullus
It's the old headpiece that makes a man, the rest is all rubbish.
Petronius Arbiter
To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?"Cicero, Orator, 46 BCBy way of 'Dictator' by Robert Harris, 2015
Cicero
Remember it is not you who supports the root, but the root that supports you.
Apostle Paul -- Letter to the Romans
If you aspire to the highest place it is no disgrace to stop at the second or even the third place.
Cicero
Happy is the man who has learned the causes of things.
Virgil
But if you do not wish to die of thirst in the desert, drink charity. This is the fountain the Lord has willed to place here, lest we faint on the way, and we shall drink it more abundantly when we come to the Fatherland.
Augustine of Hippo
Life is a stranger's sojourn a night at an inn.
Marcus Aurelius
What am I but a little flesh, a little breath, and the thinking part that rules the whole?
Marcus Aurelius
Courage easily finds its own eloquence.
Plautus
he who is greedy is always in want
Horace
There’s nothing more insufferable than people who boast about their own humility
Marcus Aurelius
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
Humility raises us not by human arrogance but by divine grace.
Augustine of Hippo
Miracles are not contrary to nature but only contrary to what we know about nature.
Augustine of Hippo
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
No one reaches a high position without daring.
Publilius Syrus
Oh, what darkness does great prosperity cast over our minds!
Seneca
I am a man I count nothing human foreign to me.
Terence
Oh! that I might repose on Thee! Oh! that Thou wouldest enter into my heart, inebriate it, that I may forget my ills, and embrace Thee, my sole good?
Augustine of Hippo
It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The man is either mad or he is making verses.
Horace
Events of great consequence often spring from trifling circumstances.
Livy
Le bonheur, c'est continuer à désirer ce que l'on a déjà.
Augustine of Hippo
A gift consists not in what is done or given, but in the intention of the giver or doer.
Seneca
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
They laboriously do nothing.
Seneca
We should every night call ourselves to an account: What infirmity have I mastered today? What passions opposed! What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired?
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
[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
Make money, money by fair means if you can, if not, but any means money.
Horace
Poets have a license to lie.
Pliny the Younger
A liar should have a good memory.
Quintilian
My soul is like a house, small for you to enter, but I pray you to enlarge it. It is in ruins, but I ask you to remake it. It contains much that you will not be pleased to see: this I know and do not hide. But who is to rid it of these things? There is no one but you.
Augustine of Hippo
Dare to begin! He who postpones living rightly is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses.
Horace
However much you possess there's someone else who has more, and you'll be fancying yourself to be short of things you need to exact extent to which you lag behind him.
Seneca
Greater things are believed of those who are absent.
Tacitus
We must master our good fortune or it will master us.
Publilius Syrus
And now the measure of my song is done: The work has reached its end; the book is mine, None shall unwrite these words: nor angry Jove, Nor war, nor fire, nor flood, Nor venomous time that eats our lives away. Then let that morning come, as come it will, When this disguise I carry shall be no more, And all the treacherous years of life undone, And yet my name shall rise to heavenly music, The deathless music of the circling stars. As long as Rome is the Eternal City These lines shall echo from the lips of men, As long as poetry speaks truth on earth, That immortality is mine to wear.
Ovid
Viewed from a distance, everything is beautiful.
Tacitus
The mind that is anxious about the future is miserable.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca