Cicero Quotes

Of evils one should choose the least. [Lat., Ex malis eligere minima oportere.]

I know not any season of life that is past more agreeably than virtuous old age.

History is truely the witness of times past, the light of truth, the life of memory, the teacher of life, the messenger of antiquity.

Not to have knowledge of what happened before you were born is to be condemned to live as a child.

What is there that is illustrious that is not also attended by labor?

Anger should never appear in awarding punishment.

I have sworn with my tongue, but my mind is unsworn. [Lat., Juravi lingua, mentem injuratem gero.]

Everyone has his besetting sin.

We are born poets. we become orators.

What we call pleasure, and rightly so is the absence of all pain.

In everything, without doubt, truth has the advantage over imitation.

Democritus maintains that there can be no great poet without a spite of madness.

You might as well take the sun out of the sky as friendship from life: for the immortal gods have given us nothing better or more delightful.

Fire and water are not of more universal use than friendship.

Sweet is the memory of past troubles.

To know the laws is not to memorize their letter but to grasp their full force and meaning.

If you would abolish covetousness, you must abolish its mother, profusion.

But the Night Mother is mother to all! It is her voice we follow! Her will! Would you dare risk disobedience? And surely... punishment?

Hmm... That's like telling you about the cold of space, or terror of midnight. Sithis is all those things. He is... the Void.

What is so beneficial to the people as liberty, which we see not only to be greedily sought after by men, but also by beasts, and to be prepared in all things.

It is a true saying that 'one falsehood easily leads to another.'

Memory is the receptacle and sheath of all knowledge

What is more agreeable than one's home?

He who suffers, remembers.

War should be undertaken in such a way as to show that its only object is peace.

It is certain that memory contains not only philosophy, but all the arts and all that appertain to the use of life.

Longing not so much to change things as to overturn them.

Ye immortal gods! where in the world are we?

Like readily consorts with like.

Pardon is granted to necessity.

Work makes a callus against grief.

For the laws are dumb in the midst of arms.

No sober person dances.

In the master there is a servant, in the servant a master.

Our minds are rendered buoyant by exercise.

The human mind ever longs for occupation.

Endless money forms the sinews of war. [Lat., Nervi belli pecunia infinita.]

I wonder that a soothsayer doesn't laugh whenever he sees another soothsayer.

The leaders should all relate to this principle: the governed must be as happy as possible.

The celestial order and the beauty of the universe compel me to admit that there is some excellent and eternal Being, who deserves the respect and homage of men

Nature abhors annihilation. [Lat., Ab interitu naturam abhorrere.]

The well-known old remark of Cato, who used to wonder how two soothsayers could look one another in the face without laughing.

Friendship is the only point in human affairs concerning the benefit of which all, with one voice, agree.

That folly of old age which is called dotage is peculiar to silly old men, not to age itself.

Physicians, when the cause of disease is discovered, consider that the cure is discovered.

Aristoteles quidem ait: 'Omnes ingeniosos melancholicos esse.' Aristotle says that all men of genius are melancholy.

Our thoughts are free.

My precept to all who build, is, that the owner should be an ornament to the house, and not the house to the owner.

Nature loves nothing solitary, and always reaches out to something, as a support, which ever in the sincerest friend is most delightful.

Nothing is so strongly fortified that it cannot be taken by money.