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Quotes by Roman Authors
"Friendship is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies."
"To endeavor to domineer over conscience, is to invade the citadel of heaven."
"The firmest friendship is based on an identity of likes and dislikes."
"He who speaks evil only differs from his who does evil in that he lacks opportunity."
"The happy man is not he who seems thus to others, but who seems thus to himself."
"Remember that all we have is "on loan from Fortune, which can reclaim it without our permission-indeed, without even advance notice. Thus, we should love all our dear ones, but always with the thought that we have no promise that we may keep them forever-nay, no promise even that we may keep them for long."
"It is regret for the absence of his loved one which causes a mourner to grieve: yet it is clear that this in itself is bearable enough; for we do not weep at their being absent or intending to be absent during their lifetime, although when they leave our sight we have no more pleasure in them. What tortures us, therefore, is an idea."
"I've come across people who say that there is a sort of inborn restlessness in the human spirit and an urge to change one's abode; for man is endowed with a mind which is changeable and and unsettled: nowhere at rest, it darts about and directs its thoughts to all places known and unknown, a wanderer which cannot endure repose and delights chiefly in novelty."
"Malice drinks one-half of its own poison."
"Barley porridge, or a crust of barley bread, and water do not make a very cheerful diet, but nothing gives one keener pleasure than having the ability to derive pleasure even from that-- and the feeling of having arrived at something which one cannot be deprived of by any unjust stroke of fortune."
"No one has the right to be sorry for himself for a misfortune that strikes everyone."
"The courage of a soldier is heightened by his knowledge of his profession."
"Let each man pass his days in that wherein his skill is greatest."
"No guest is so welcome in a friend's house that he will not become a nuisance after three days."
"Bad company is like a nail driven into a post, which, after the first and second blow, may be drawn out with little difficulty; but being once driven up to the head, the pincers cannot take hold to draw it out, but which can only be done by the destruction of the wood."
"Rather leave the crime of the guilty unpunished than condemn the innocent."
"The vulgar crowd values friends according to their usefulness."
"Whatever this is that I am, it is a little flesh and breath, and the ruling part. Throw away thy books; no longer distract thyself: it is not allowed; but as if thou wast now dying, despise the flesh; it is blood and bones and a network, a contexture of nerves, veins, and arteries. See the breath also, what kind of a thing it is, air, and not always the same, but every moment sent out and again sucked in. The third then is the ruling part: consider thus: Thou art an old man; no longer let this be a slave, no longer be pulled by the strings like a puppet to unsocial movements, no longer be either dissatisfied with thy present lot, or shrink from the future."
"Truth, they say, is but too often in difficulties, but is never finally suppressed."
"The honors of this world, what are they but puff, and emptiness, and peril of falling?"
"Nothing is more unreliable than the populace, nothing more obscure than human intentions, nothing more deceptive than the whole electoral system."
"You can accomplish by kindness what you cannot by force."
"What once were vices are now manners."
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