Marcus Tullius Cicero Quotes

Do not hold the delusion that your advancement is accomplished by crushing others.

Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself; you will never err if you listen to your own suggestions.

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

More law, less justice.

No one sees what is before his feet: we all gaze at the stars. [Lat., Quod est ante pedes nemo spectat: coeli scrutantur plagas.]

We make allowance for necessity.

The greatest pleasures are only narrowly separated from disgust.

I follow nature as the surest guide, and resign myself with implicit obedience to her sacred ordinances.

No sane man will dance.

Great is the power, great is the authority of a senate that is unanimous in its opinions.

He cannot be strict in judging, who does not wish others to be strict judges of himself.

Friendship is given us by nature, not to favor vice, but to aid virtue.

We must conceive of this whole universe as one commonwealth of which both gods and men are members.

True glory strikes root, and even extends itself; all false pretensions fall as do flowers, nor can any feigned thing be lasting.

For even if the allotted space of life be short, it is long enough in which to live honorably and well.

Enmity is anger watching the opportunity for revenge.

In nothing do men more nearly approach the gods than in giving health to men.

The spirit is the true self.

He does not seem to me to be a free man who does not sometimes do nothing.

Thus nature has no love for solitude, and always leans, as it were, on some support; and the sweetest support is found in the most intimate friendship.

He who acknowledges a kindness has it still, and he who has a grateful sense of it has requited it.

There is no mortal whom pain and disease do not reach.

It is not easy to distinguish between true and false affection, unless there occur one of those crises in which, as gold is tried by fire, so a faithful friendship may be tested by danger.

Ability without honor is useless.

If a man cannot feel the power of God when he looks upon the stars, then I doubt whether he is capable of any feeling at all.

Probability is the very guide of life.

We do not destroy religion by destroying superstition.

Morals today are corrupted by our worship of riches.

What is permissible is not always honorable.

Nothing is so secure as that money will not defeat it.

It is as hard for the good to suspect evil, as it is for the bad to suspect good.

Hatred is inveterate anger.

Every man should bear his own grievances rather than detract from the comforts of another.

The evil implanted in man by nature spreads so imperceptibly, when the habit of wrong-doing is unchecked, that he himself can set no limit to his shamelessness.

For he, indeed, who looks into the face of a friend beholds, as it were, a copy of himself.

In prosperity let us most carefully avoid pride, disdain, and arrogance.

I never admire another's fortune so much that I became dissatisfied with my own.

The works of nature must all be accounted good.

History is indeed the witness of the times, the light of truth.

Strict law is often great injustice.

There is no moment without some duty.

The eyes like sentinel occupy the highest place in the body.

Rashness belongs to youth; prudence to old age.

The master sometimes serves, and the servant sometimes is master.

Friends are proved by adversity.

There is no grief which time does not lessen and soften. [Lat., Nullus dolor est quem non longinquitas temporis minuat ac molliat.]

Let arms give place to the robe, and the laurel of the warriors yield to the tongue of the orator.

Fortune is not only blind herself, but blinds the people she has embraced.

You must become an old man in good time if you wish to be an old man long. [Lat., Mature fieri senem, si diu velis esses senex.]

Without your knowledge, the eyes and ears of many will see and watch you, as they have done already.