Quotes by Roman Authors - Page 19

Fidelity purchased with money, money can destroy.
Seneca
Pale Death with impartial tread beats at the poor man's cottage door and at the palaces of kings.
Horace
Anything in any way beautiful derives its beauty from itself and asks nothing beyond itself. Praise is no part of it, for nothing is made worse or better by praise.
Marcus Aurelius
There is nothing in the world so much admired as a man who knows how to bear unhappiness with courage."— Seneca
Seneca
Every one is bound to bear patiently the results of his own example.
Phaedrus
What power has law where only money rules?
Petronius Arbiter
No one could endure lasting adversity if it continued to have the same force as when it first hit us. We are all tied to Fortune, some by a loose and golden chain, and others by a tight one of baser metal: but what does it matter? We are all held in the same captivity, and those who have bound others are themselves in bonds - unless you think perhaps that the left-hand chain is lighter. One man is bound by high office, another by wealth; good birth weighs down some, and a humble origin others; some bow under the rule of other men and some under their own; some are restricted to one place by exile, others by priesthoods: all life is a servitude.So you have to get used to your circumstances, complain about them as little as possible, and grasp whatever advantage they have to offer: no condition is so bitter that a stable mind cannot find some consolation in it.
Seneca
The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.
Marcus Aurelius
All outdoors may be bedlam, provided there is no disturbance within.
Seneca
The conditions of conquest are always easy. We have but to toil awhile endure awhile believe always and never turn back.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.
St. Augustine
Time bears away all things.
Virgil
If we could survive without a wife, citizens of Rome, all of us would do without that nuisance; but since nature has so decreed that we cannot manage comfortably with them, nor live in any way without them, we must plan for our lasting preservation rather than for our temporary pleasure.
Augustus
Things of themselves cannot touch the soul at all. They have no entry to the soul, and cannot turn or move it. The soul alone turns and moves itself, making all externals presented to it cohere with the judgements it thinks worthy of itself.
Marcus Aurelius
Whatever is well said by another is mine.
Seneca
It takes all of our life to learn how to live, and – something that may surprise you more – it takes just as long to learn how to die.
Seneca
No man is happy unless he believes he is.
Publilius Syrus
But your own tears blind you to mine.I am not neglectful of friendship,but we two squat in the same coracle,we are both swamped by the same stormy waters,I have not the gifts of a happy man. . . Often enough.
Catullus
Humans have come into being for the sake of each other, so either teach them, or learn to bear them.
Marcus Aurelius
I am a man nothing human is alien to me.
Terence
If you are surprised at the number of our maladies count our cooks.
Seneca
A sound mind in a sound body is a thing to be prayed for.
Juvenal
I know that I am mortal by nature, and ephemeral; but when I trace at my pleasure the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies I no longer touch the earth with my feet: I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of ambrosia
Ptolemy
The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.
Marcus Aurelius
When in fear it is safest to force the attack.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
By union the smallest states thrive by discord the greatest are destroyed.
Sallust
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
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
Because thou writest me often, I thank thee ... Never do I receive a letter from thee, but immediately we are together.
Seneca
All of us are creatures of a day; the rememberer and the remembered alike. All is ephemeral—both memory and the object of memory. The time is at hand when you will have forgotten everything; and the time is at hand when all will have forgotten you. Always reflect that soon you will be no one, and nowhere.
Marcus Aurelius
Remember that all we have is “on loan” from Fortune, which can reclaim it without our permission—indeed, without even advance notice. Thus, we should love all our dear ones, but always with the thought that we have no promise that we may keep them forever—nay, no promise even that we may keep them for long.
Seneca
Error, indeed is never set forth in its naked deformity, lest, being thus exposed, it should at once be detected. But it is craftily decked out in an attractive dress, so as, by its outward form, to make it appear to the inexperienced more true than truth itself.
Irenaeus of Lyons
Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together,but do so with all your heart.
Marcus Aurelius
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
Where there is unity, there is always victory
Publilius Syrus
Dripping water hollows out stone, not through force but through persistence.
Ovid
They are able who think they are able.
Virgil
you shall be told what pleased me to-day in the writings ofHecato; it is these words: "What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself." That wasindeed a great benefit; such a person can never be alone. You may be sure that such a man is a friend to all mankind.
Seneca
Find out how much God has given you and from it take what you need the remainder is needed by others.
Saint Augustine
Man himself is a great deep, whose very hairs Thou numberest, O Lord, and they fall not to the ground without Thee. And yet are the hairs of his head easier to be numbered than his feelings, and the beatings of his heart.
Augustine of Hippo
that you would not anticipate misery since the evils you dread as coming upon you may perhaps never reach you at least they are not yet come Thus some things torture us more than they ought, some before they ought and some which ought never to torture us at all. We heighten our pain either by presupposing a cause or anticipation
Seneca
Fire tests gold, suffering tests brave men.
Seneca
Sport begets tumultuous strife and wrath and wrath begets fierce quarrels and war to the death.
Horace
If you would wish another to keep your secret first keep it yourself.
Seneca
That vague and wandering opinion of Deity is declared by an apostle to be ignorance of God:
Augustine of Hippo
Socrates indeed when he was asked of what country he called himself said "Of the world" for he considered himself an inhabitant and a citizen of the whole world.
Cicero
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
All men love themselves.
Plautus
I am not ashamed to confess that I am ignorant of wha. I do not know.
Cicero
We are members of one great body, planted by nature…. We must consider that we were born for the good of the whole
Seneca
The Bible was composed in such a way that as beginners mature, its meaning grows with them.
Augustine of Hippo
When spirits fall, their darkness is revealed, for they are stripped of the garment of your light. By the misery and restlessness which they then suffer you make clear to us how noble a being is your rational creation, for nothing less than yourself suffices to give it rest and happiness. This means that it cannot find them in itself. For you, O God, will shine on the darkness about us. From you proceeds our garment of light, and our dusk shall be noonday.
Augustine of Hippo
Few are those who wish to be endowed with virtue rather than to seem so.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Many commit the same crimes with a very different result. One bears a cross for his crime another a crown.
Juvenal
He who begun has half done. Dare to be wise begin.
Horace
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
Courage is to take hard knocks like a man when occasion calls.
Plautus
Ira furor brevis est: animum rege: qui nisi paret imperat.(Anger is a brief madness: govern your mind [temper], for unless it obeys it commands.)
Horace
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
Fortune and Love befriend the bold.
Ovid