Quotes by Roman Authors - Page 3

Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
Publilius Syrus
If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you’re needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person.
Seneca
Give me the waters of Lethe that numb the heart, if they exist, I will still not have the power to forget you.
Ovid
Any man can make mistakes but only an idiot persists in his error.
Cicero
For greed all nature is too little.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
Those wars are unjust which are undertaken without provocation. For only a war waged for revenge or defense can be just.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Death twitches my ear;'Live,' he says... 'I'm coming.
Virgil
Devils so work that things which are not, appear to men as if they were real.
Lactantius
There is nothing so bitter that a patient mind cannot find some solace for it.
Seneca
The greatest loss of time is delay and expectation, which depend upon the future. We let go the present, which we have in our power, and look forward to that which depends upon chance, and so relinquish a certainty for an uncertainty.
Seneca
Two distinctive traits especially identify beyond a doubt a strong and dominant character. One trait is contempt for external circumstances, when one is convinced that men ought to respect, to desire, and to pursue only what is moral and right, that men should be subject to nothing, not to another man, not to some disturbing passion, not to Fortune. The second trait, when your character has the disposition I outlined just now, is to perform the kind of services that are significant and most beneficial; but they should also be services that are a severe challenge, that are filled with ordeals, and that endanger not only your life but also the many comforts that make life attractive.Of these two traits, all the glory, magnificence, and the advantage, too, let us not forget, are in the second, while the drive and the discipline that make men great are in the former.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.
Marcus Aurelius
The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.
Tacitus
Love conquers all.
Virgil
Night brings our troubles to the light rather than banishes them.
Seneca
Revenge is an inhuman word.
Seneca
Grant unto us, Lord, that we may set our hope on Thy name…and open the eyes of our hearts, that wemay know Thee.”“We beseech Thee, Lord and Master, to be our help and succour. Save those among us who are intribulation; have mercy on the lowly; lift up the fallen; show Thyself to those in need; heal the sick; turnagain the wanderers of Thy people; feed the hungry; ransom our prisoners; raise up the weak; comfortthe faint-hearted. Let all nations know that Thou art God alone, and that Jesus Christ is Thy Son, andthat we are Thy people and the sheep of Thy pasture.”“We praise Thee who art able to do these and better things than these, through Jesus Christ the HighPriest and Guardian of our souls, through whom be glory and majesty to Thee, both now andthroughout all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.
Clement of Rome
distringit librorum multitudo (the abundance of books is distraction)
Seneca
It is often better not to see an insult than to avenge it.
Seneca
Let wickedness escape as it may at the bar it never fails of doing justice upon itself for every guilty person is his own hangman.
Seneca
Try to live the life of the good man who is more than content with what is allocated to him.
Marcus Aurelius
It is fortune not wisdom that rules man's life.
Cicero
When you have no basis for an argument abuse the plaintiff.
Cicero
The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.
Tertullian
The shortest route to wealth is the contempt of wealth.
Seneca
What once were vices are now manners.
Seneca
A room without books is like a body without a soul.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
It is not death that a man should fear he should fear never beginning to live.
Marcus Aurelius
I am the poet of the poor, because I was poor when I loved; since I could not give gifts, I gave words.
Ovid
Fate rules the affairs of mankind with no recognizable order.
Seneca
Every lover is a soldier.
Ovid
Learn to see in another's calamity the ills which you should avoid.
Publilius Syrus
In other living creatures the ignorance of themselves is nature but in men it is a vice.
Boethius
It is regret for the absence of his loved one which causes a mourner to grieve: yet it is clear that this in itself is bearable enough; for we do not weep at their being absent or intending to be absent during their lifetime, although when they leave our sight we have no more pleasure in them. What tortures us, therefore, is an idea.
Seneca
Happy the man who has broken the chains which hurt the mind and has given up worrying once and for all.
Ovid
Let them know a real man who lives as he was meant to live.
Marcus Aurelius
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
Marcus Aurelius
...it is more civilized to make fun of life than to bewail it.
Seneca
He who postpones the hour of living rightly is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses.
Horace
After all, I was once like you are, but being the right sort I got where I am.
Petronius Arbiter
It is foolish to tear one’s hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness.
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
Fate is not satisfied with inflicting one calamity.
Publilius Syrus
...to be able to enjoy the life you have spent, is to live it twice.
Marcus Valerius Martialis
Human life. Duration: momentary. Nature: changeable. Perception: dim. Condition of Body: decaying. Soul: spinning around. Fortune: unpredictable. Lasting Fame: uncertain. Sum Up: The body and its parts are a river, the soul a dream and mist, life is warfare and a journey far from home, lasting reputation is oblivion.
Marcus Aurelius
The crop always seems better in our neighbor's field and our neighbor's cow gives more milk.
Ovid
Let us be brave in the face of adversity.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
What boundary ever set limits to the service of mankind?
Claudian
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
God give me patience, to reconcile with what I am not able to changeGive me strength to change what I canAnd give me wisdom to distinguish one from another.
Marcus Aurelius
No power on earth, if it labours beneath the burden of fear, can possibly be strong enough to survive.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
If someone can prove me wrong and show me my mistake in any thought or action, I shall gladly change. I seek the truth, which never harmed anyone: the harm is to persist in one's own self-deception and ignorance.
Marcus Aurelius
The smell of profit is clean and sweet whatever the source.
Juvenal
You have the power to strip away many superfluous troubles located wholly in your judgement, and to possess a large room for yourself embracing in thought the whole cosmos, to consider everlasting time, to think of the rapid change in the parts of each thing, of how short it is from birth until dissolution, and how the void before birth and that after dissolution are equally infinite.
Marcus Aurelius
Oh, God, to know you is life. To serve You is freedom. To praise you is the soul's joy and delight. Guard me with the power of Your grace here and in all places. Now and at all times, forever. Amen.
Augustine of Hippo
There is no sin unless through a man's own will, and hence the reward when we do right things also of our own
Augustine of Hippo
Consider how much more you often suffer from your anger and grief than from those very things for which you are angry and grieved.
Marcus Aurelius
Nothing befalls a man except what is in his nature to endure.
Marcus Aurelius
From the philosopher Catulus, never to be dismissive of a friend's accusation, even if it seems unreasonable, but to make every effort to restore the relationship to its normal condition.
Marcus Aurelius
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