Top 1054 Quotes & Sayings by Marcus Tullius Cicero - Page 16

The home is the empire! There is no peace more delightful than one's own fireplace.

Anyone who has got a book collection/library and a garden wants for nothing.

Wars, therefore, are to be undertaken for this end, that we may live in peace, without being injured; but when we obtain the victory, we must preserve those enemies who behaved without cruelty or inhumanity during the war.

The wise man never loses his temper.

...the counsels of the Divine Mind had some glimpse of truth when they said that men are born in order to suffer the penalty for sins committed in a former life.

Here is a man whose life and actions the world has already condemned - yet whose enormous fortune...has already brought him acquittal!

The nearer I approach death the more I feel like one who is in sight of land at last and is about to anchor in one's home port after a long voyage.

A true friend is a sort of second self.

There has never been a poet or orator who thought another better than himself.

A youth of sensuality and intemperance delivers over to old age a worn-out body.

There is, I know not how, a certain presage, as it were, of a future existence; and this takes the deepest root, and is most discoverable, in the greatest geniuses and most exalted souls.

We rejoice in the joys of our friends as much as we do our own, and we are equally grieved at their sorrows. Wherefore the wise people will feel toward their friends as they do toward themselves, and whatever labor they would encounter with a view to their own pleasure, they will encounter also for the sake of their friends.

We must be ever on the search for some persons whom we shall love and who will love us in return. If good will and affection are taken away, every joy is taken from life.

The remembrance of past misery is sweet.

For no phase of life, whether public or private, whether in business or in the home, whether one is working on what concerns oneself alone or dealing with another, can be without its moral duty; on the discharge of such duties depends all that is morally right, and on their neglect all that is morally wrong in life.

For nothing is more commendable, nothing more becoming in a preeminently great man than courtesy and forbearance.

The more peculiarly his own a man's character is, the better it fits him.

It is disgraceful when the passers-by exclaim, "O ancient house! alas, how unlike is thy present master to thy former one.

The law is silent during war. [Lat., Silent leges inter arma.]

The following passage is one of those cited by Copernicus himself in his preface to De Revolutionibus: "The Syracusan Hicetas, as Theophrastus asserts, holds the view that the heaven, sun, moon, stars, and in short all of the things on high are stationary, and that nothing in the world is in motion except the earth, which by revolving and twisting round its axis with extreme velocity produces all the same results as would be produced if the earth were stationary and the heaven in motion. . . ."

He is an eloquent man who can treat humble subjects with delicacy, lofty things impressively, and moderate things temperately.

Nor do I regret that I have lived, since I have so lived that I think I was not born in vain, and I quit life as if it were an inn, not a home.

For of all gainful professions, nothing is better, nothing more pleasing, nothing more delightful, nothing better becomes a well-bred man than #? agriculture

I cannot find a faithful message-bearer," he wrote to his friend, the scholar Atticus. "How few are they who are able to carry a rather weighty letter without lightening it by reading.

To remain ignorant of history is to remain forever a child

Law stands mute in the midst of arms.

The dutifulness of children is the foundation of all virtues.

There is no being of any race who, if he finds the proper guide, cannot attain to virtue.

History illumes reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life

It is difficult to remember all, and ungracious to omit any.

It is our duty, my young friends, to resist old age.

Philosophy is the true mother of science.

No one sees what is before his feet: they scan the tracks of heaven.

On the subject of the nature of the gods, the first question is Do the gods exist or do the not? It is difficult you may say to deny that they exist. I would agree if we were arguing the matter in a public assembly, but in a private discussion of this kind, it is perfectly easy to do so.

How great an evil do you see that may have been announced by you against the Republic? - Videtis quantum scelus contra rem publicam vobis nuntiatum sit?

Thrift is a great revenue.

Be sure that it is not you that is mortal, but only your body. For that man whom your outward form reveals is not yourself; the spirit is the true self, not that physical figure which and be pointed out by your finger.

Nulla (enim) res tantum ad dicendum proficit, quantum scriptio Nothing so much assists learning as writing down what we wish to remember.

Like, according to the old proverb, naturally goes with like.

The hours pass and the days and the months and the years, and the past time never returns.

. . . for until that God who rules all the region of the sky . . . has freed you from the fetters of your body, you cannot gain admission here. Men were created with the understanding that they were to look after that sphere called Earth, which you see in the middle of the temple. Minds have been given to them out of the eternal fires you call fixed stars and planets, those spherical solids which, quickened with divine minds, journey through their circuits and orbits with amazing speed.

Let us not go over the old ground but rather prepare for what is to come.

All things tend to corrupt perverted minds.

For many wish not so much to be, as to seem to be, endowed with real virtue.

Mental stains can not be removed by time, nor washed away by any waters. [Lat., Animi labes nec diuturnitate vanescere nec omnibus ullis elui potest.]

If wisdom be attainable, let us not only win but enjoy it.

Let art, then, imitate nature, find what she desires, and follow as she directs. For in invention nature is never last, education never first; rather the beginnings of things arise from natural talent, and ends are reached by discipline.

All the arts of refinement have mutual kinship.

There is nothing which wings its flight so swiftly as calumny, nothing is uttered with more ease; nothing is listened to with more readiness, nothing disbursed more widely.

I am a Roman citizen.

Let war be so carried on that no other object may seem to be sought but the acquisition of peace. [Lat., Bellum autem ita suscipiatur, ut nihil aliud, nisi pax, quaesita videatur.]

There is no more sure tie between friends than when they are united in their objects and wishes.

Enmity is anger watching the opportunity for revenge.

Let the soldier yield to the civilian.

A man does not wonder at what he sees frequently, even though he be ignorant of the reason. If anything happens which he has not seen before, he calls it a prodigy.

The precept, "Know yourself," was not solely intended to obviate the pride of mankind; but likewise that we might understand our own worth.

Men think they may justly do that for which they have a precedent.

From all sides there is equally a way to the lower world.

There is no praise in being upright, where no one can, or tries to corrupt you.

By Hercules! I prefer to err with Plato, whom I know how much you value, than to be right in the company of such men.