Roman Quotes

Famous quotes and philosophy from ancient Rome.

ROMAN PHILOSOPHERS: Augustus, Aulus-Gellius, Ausonius, Boethius, Caecilius-Statius, Cato The Elder, Cicero, Claudius, Cornelius-Nepos, Epictetus, Horace, Ignatius-of-Antioch, Julius-Caesar, Juvenal, Livy, Lucan, Lucretius, Marcus-Aurelius, Musonius-Rufus, Ovid, Phaedrus, Plautus, Pliny-the-Elder, Plotinus, Plutarch, Proclus, Publilius-Syrus, Publius-Flavius-Vegetius-Renatus, Quintilian, Quintus-Ennius, Sallust, Scipio-Africanus, Seneca, Sextus-Propertius, Tacitus, Terence, Tertullian, Tiberius, Virgil, Vitruvius
16

A room without books is like a body without a soul.

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9

Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century:
1. Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others;
2. Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected;
3. Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it;
4. Refusing to set aside trivial preferences;
5. Neglecting development and refinement of the mind;
6. Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.

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7

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

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7

Circumstances don’t make the man, they only reveal him to himself.

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6

It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment.

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5

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.

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5

We cannot control the evil tongues of others; but a good life enables us to disregard them.

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5

The traitor rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.

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4

Where there’s life, there’s hope.

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4

Don’t think, just do.

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4

Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.

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4

Do every act of your life as though it were the very last act of your life.

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3

He who fears death has already lost the life he covets.

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3

Happy are those who dare courageously to defend what they love.

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3

Constant dripping hollows out a stone.

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2

Love and dignity cannot share the same abode.

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2

Buy not what you want, but what you have need of; that which you do not need is always expensive.

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2

We are mad, not only individually but nationally. We check
manslaughter and isolated murders, but what of war and the much-vaunted
crime of slaughtering whole peoples?

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2

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.

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2

An angry man opens his mouth and shuts his eyes.

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2

He that is discontented in one place will seldom be happy in another.

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2

The public has more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it.

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2

The day, water, sun, moon, night – I do not have to purchase these things with money.

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2

When men are inhuman, take care not to feel towards them as they do towards other humans.

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2

The happy life is a life that is in harmony with its own nature.

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2

It is a difficult matter to argue with the belly since it has no ears.

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2

No man is wise enough by himself.

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2

Never trust the advice of a man in difficulties.

2

Freedom is the power to live as we choose.

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2

No man pleases by silence; many I please by speaking briefly.

2

Knowledge which is divorced from justice may be called cunning rather than wisdom.

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2

No one is so old as to think that he cannot live one more year.

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2

As long as I breathe, I hope.

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2

If anyone says that the best life of all is to sail the sea, and then
adds that I must not sail upon a sea where shipwrecks are a common
occurrence and there are often sudden storms that sweep the helmsman in
an adverse direction, I conclude that this man, although he lauds
navigation, really forbids me to launch my ship.

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2

Life is like a play: it’s not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.

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2

The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny.

2

When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having
many acquaintances, but no friends.

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2

An evil life is a kind of death.

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2

Love is a kind of warfare.

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2

The haft of the arrow had been feathered with one of the eagles own plumes. We often give our enemies the means of our own destruction.

2

To teach is a necessity, to please is a sweetness, to persuade is a victory.

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2

The happiness and unhappiness of the rational, social animal depends not on what he feels but on what he does; just as his virtue and vice consist not in feeling but in doing.

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2

Every man, however wise, needs the advice of some sagacious friend in the affairs of life.

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