Quotes by Roman Authors - Page 7

Burdens become light when cheerfully borne.
Ovid
The covetous man is always poor.
Claudian
Having appeared at the end of the first creation, man [and women] stand at the beginning of the second, since the world is transfigured through [them].
St. Justin
The life given us, by nature is short; but the memory of a well-spent life is eternal.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
All this hurrying from place to place won’t bring you any relief, for you’re traveling in the company of your own emotions, followed by your troubles all the way.
Seneca
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
Lord who art always the same give that I know myself give that I know Thee.
St. Augustine
You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can't control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone.
Marcus Aurelius
Law applied to its extreme is the greatest injustice
Marcus Tullius Cicero
The willing, Destiny guides them. The unwilling, Destiny drags them.
Seneca
It is a tiresome way of speaking when you should despatch the business to beat about the bush.
Plautus
Every good man resists others in those points in which he resists himself.
Augustine of Hippo
Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable.
Cicero
Do every act of your life as though it were the very last act of your life.
Marcus Aurelius
He cannot have God for his Father who will not have the Church for his mother.
Augustine of Hippo
For it is in your power to retire into yourself whenever you choose.
Marcus Aurelius
We are all motivated by a keen desire for praise and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory.
Cicero
For every man, however laudably he lives, yet yields in some points to the lust of the flesh.
Augustine of Hippo
The life of the dead is set in the memory of the living.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
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
I am a human being, so nothing human is strange to me.
Terence
If God adds another day to our life let us receive it gladly.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
If you believe what you like in the Gospel, and reject what you don't like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself.
Augustine of Hippo
We should lay up in peace what we shall need in war.
Syrus
In Rome you long for the country. In the country you praise to the skies the distant town.
Horace
The end of life puts the longest life on a par with the shortest.
Augustine of Hippo
What is left when honor is lost?
Publilius Syrus
Besides what endless brawls by wives are bred,The curtain lecture makes a mournful bed.
Juvenal
For I am aware what ability is requisite to persuade the proud how great is the virtue of humility, which raises us, not by a quite human arrogance, but by a divine grace, above all earthly dignities that totter on this shifting scene.
Augustine of Hippo
Christ is not valued at all, unless he is valued above all.
Augustine of Hippo
If thou workest at that which is before thee ... expecting nothing fearing nothing but satisfied with thy present activity according to Nature and with heroic truth in every word and sound which thou utterest thou wilt live happy. And there is no man who is able to prevent this.
Marcus Aurelius
Where fear is happiness is not.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
It is not the weight of the future or the past that is pressing upon you but ever that of the present alone. Even this burden too can be lessened if you confine it strictly to its own limits.
Marcus Aurelius
Thus, every entity, even if it is a defective one, in so far as it is an entity, is good. In so far as it is defective, it is evil.
Augustine of Hippo
Better late than never.
Livy
No matter how many men you kill, you can't kill your successor.
Seneca
The face is a picture of the mind with the eyes as its interpreter.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
He who has calmly reconciled his life to fate ... can look fortune in the face.
Boethius
The whole of life but labours in the dark.For just as children tremble and fear allIn the viewless dark, so even we at timesDread in the light so many things that beNo whit more fearsome than what children feign,Shuddering, will be upon them in the dark.This terror then, this darkness of the mind,Not sunrise with its flaring spokes of light,Nor glittering arrows of morning can disperse,But only nature's aspect and her law.
Titus Lucretius Carus
The goose gabbles amid the melodious swans.
Virgil
When you arise in the moring, think of what a precious privelege it is to be alive-- to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love
Marcus Aurelius
If thou wouldst marry wisely marry thine equal.
Ovid
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
It is quality rather than quantity that matters.
Seneca
..and why the winter suns so rush to bathe themselves in the seaand what slows down the nights to a long lingering crawl...
Virgil
He who receives a benefit with gratitude repays the first installment on his debt.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
A wholesome fear would be a fit guardian for the citizens.
Augustine of Hippo
Every living organism is fulfilled when it follows the right path for its own nature.
Marcus Aurelius
Habit if not resisted soon becomes necessity.
St. Augustine
In quarreling the truth is always lost.
Syrus
Whatever disgrace we may have deserved it is almost always in our power to re-establish our character.
Plautus
Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretence.
Marcus Aurelius
Fortune helps the brave.
Virgil
Do not be ashamed of help.
Marcus Aurelius
Do wrong to thyself, do wrong to thyself, my soul, but thou wilt no longer have the opportunity of honoring thyself.
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
In the make-up of human beings, intelligence counts for more than our hands, and that is our true strength.
Ovid
Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, "Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?" neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility. . . .
Marcus Aurelius
Nescire autem quid antequam natus sis acciderit, id est semper esse puerum. (To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.)
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Your mind will take on the character of your most frequent thoughts: souls are dyed by thoughts.
Marcus Aurelius
In times of war, the law falls s
Marcus Tullius Cicero