Quotes by Roman Authors - Page 2

In an easy cause any man may be eloquent.
Ovid
If you would know who controls you see who you may not criticise.
Tacitus
Let us train our minds to desire what the situation demands.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
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
When in fear it is safest to force the attack.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.
Seneca
Who knows if the gods above will add tomorrow's span to this day's sum?
Horace
Events of great consequence often spring from trifling circumstances.
Livy
How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys which I had once feared to lose..! You drove them from me, you who are the true, the sovereign joy. You drove them from me and took their place.... O Lord my God, my Light, my Wealth, and my Salvation.
Augustine of Hippo
Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not eny anyone or anything. Love never boasts and it's never proud. Love is not rude, it's not self serving, self absorbed or conceited. Love is no t easily provoked to anger. It doesn't hold grudges nor does it keep records of who was right and who was wrong. Love does not consult with evil instead it rejoices in the truth. Love always protects. Love always trust. Love always hopes. Love always perseveres. And love never fails.
Apostle Paul
Why do we shrink from change? What can come into being save by change?
Marcus Aurelius
Free curiosity has greater power to stimulate learning than rigorous coercion. Nevertheless, the free ranging flux of curiosity is channeled by discipline under Your Law.
Augustine of Hippo
A man's life is what his thoughts make it.
Marcus Aurelius
Anger is a short madness.
Horace
They have plundered the world, stripping naked the land in their hunger… they are driven by greed, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor… They ravage, they slaughter, they seize by false pretenses, and all of this they hail as the construction of empire. And when in their wake nothing remains but a desert, they call that peace.
Tacitus
Think not so much of what you lack as of what you have: but of the things that you have, select the best, and then reflect on how eagerly you would have sought them if you did not have them.
Marcus Aurelius
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
I love the name of honor more than I fear death.
Gaius Julius Caesar
Fate would have no divinity if we were wise: it is we who make her a goddess and place her in heaven.
Juvenal
Be like a rocky promontory against which the restless surf continually pounds; it stands fast while the churning sea is lulled to sleep at its feet. I hear you say, "How unlucky that this should happen to me!" Not at all! Say instead, "How lucky that I am not broken by what has happened and am not afraid of what is about to happen. The same blow might have struck anyone, but not many would have absorbed it without capitulation or complaint.
Marcus Aurelius
Woman, the child of so many tears shall never perish.
Ambrose of Milan
Nothing is more powerful than habit.
Ovid
True happiness is to understand our duties toward God and man to enjoy the present without anxious dependence on the future not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have which is abundantly sufficient.
Seneca
Whatever disgrace we may have deserved it is almost always in our power to re-establish our character.
Plautus
The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.
Augustine of Hippo
Courage is a scorner of things which inspire fear.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
Sleep ... peace of the soul who put-test care to flight.
Ovid
The mind that is anxious about the future is miserable.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
Saepa stilum vertas, iterum quae digna legi sint scripturas. (Turn the stylus [to erase] often if you would write something worthy of being reread.)
Horace
Pale Death with impartial tread beats at the poor man's cottage door and at the palaces of kings.
Horace
Live out your life in truth and justice, tolerant of those who are neither true nor just.
Marcus Aurelius
Dare to begin! He who postpones living rightly is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses.
Horace
Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.
Marcus Aurelius
Endure and preserve yourselves for better things.
Virgil
He who has calmly reconciled his life to fate ... can look fortune in the face.
Boethius
A room without books is like a body without a soul.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Your mind will take on the character of your most frequent thoughts: souls are dyed by thoughts.
Marcus Aurelius
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
Pain is slight if opinion has added nothing to it; ... in thinking it slight, you will make it slight. Everything depends on opinion. It is according to opinion that we suffer. A man is as wretched as he has convinced himself that he is.
Seneca
It is fortune not wisdom that rules man's life.
Cicero
Of my friends I am the only one I have left.
Terence
None of us is ever satisfied with what we are.
Terence
My soul is like a house, small for you to enter, but I pray you to enlarge it. It is in ruins, but I ask you to remake it. It contains much that you will not be pleased to see: this I know and do not hide. But who is to rid it of these things? There is no one but you.
Augustine of Hippo
In victory even the cowardly like to boast while in adverse times even the brave are discredited.
Sallust
A man should always have these two rules in readiness. First, to do only what the reason of your ruling and legislating faculties suggest for the service of man. Second, to change your opinion whenever anyone at hand sets you right and unsettles you in an opinion, but this change of opinion should come only because you are persuaded that something is just or to the public advantage, not because it appears pleasant or increases your reputation.
Marcus Aurelius
Courage is to take hard knocks like a man when occasion calls.
Plautus
In wine, there's truth.
Pliny the Elder
He who cannot do what he wants must make do with what he can.
Terence
Love sometimes injures. Friendship always benefits, After friendship is formed you must trust, but before that you must judge.
Seneca
The first petition that we are to make to Almighty God is for a good conscience the next for health of mind and then of body.
Seneca
Oh, what darkness does great prosperity cast over our minds!
Seneca
Love only what befalls you and is spun for you by fate.
Marcus Aurelius
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
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
You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last.
Seneca
The precept "Know yourself " was not solely intended to obviate the pride of mankind but likewise that we might understand our own worth.
Cicero
Besides what endless brawls by wives are bred,The curtain lecture makes a mournful bed.
Juvenal
If you have understood, then what you have understood is not God.
Augustine of Hippo
We are more often frightened than hurt and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
He who has great power should use it lightly.
Seneca