Catullus Quotes
Italy
Gaius Valerius Catullus (c. 84 – c. 54 BC) was a Roman poet, the dominant figure among the New Poets (neoterici) of the 1st century BC.
Also known as: Catullus, Gaius Valerius, Gaius Valerius Catullus
Random Catullus quote
40 quotes
Idleness ere now has ruined both kings and wealthy cities.
Every one has his faults: but we do not see the wallet on our own backs.
Suns may set and rise; we, when our short day has closed, must sleep on during one neverending night.
Venus joys in many-worded babblings.
Da mi basia mille, deinde centum,
dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,
deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum.
I hate and I love. Why do I do so you perhaps ask.
I cannot say; but I feel it to be so, and I am tormented accordingly.
My Lesbia, let us live and love.
Let us live, my Lesbia, and love, and value at one farthing all the talk of crabbed old men. Suns may set and rise again. For us, when the short light has once set, remains to be slept the sleep of one unbroken night.
I hate and I love. Perchance you ask why I do that. I know not, but I feel that I do and I am tortured.
I hate and love. Why I do so, perhaps you ask. I know not, but I feel it, and I am in torment.
As a flower springs up secretly in a fenced garden, unknown to the cattle, torn up by no plough, which the winds caress, the sun strengthens, the shower draws forth, many boys, many girls, desire it.
But for the Diva’s use bestrewn is the genial bedstead,
Hidden in midmost stead, and its polisht framework of Indian
Tusk underlies its cloth empurpled by juice of the dye-shell.
The woman I love says that there is no one whom she would rather marry than me, not if Jupiter himself were to woo her. Says;—but what a woman says to her ardent lover should be written in wind and running water.
To this point is my mind reduced by your fault, Lesbia, and has so ruined itself by its own devotion, that now it can neither wish you well though you should become the best of women, nor cease to love you though you do the worst that can be done.
If I have led a pure life.
'Twas in the central chamber had been spread,
For her, the bride divine, the nuptial bed;
Of Indian ivory form'd, it shunned the eye,
Veiled by its covering of the crimson dye.
O, what is more sweet than when the mind, set free from care, lays its burden down; and, when spent with distant travel, we come back to our home, and rest our limbs on the wished-for bed? This, this alone, repays such toils as these!
Whoe’er the number would define
Of sports and joys that shall be thine,
He first must count the grains of sand
That spread the Erythræan strand,
And every star and twinkling light
That stud the glistening arch of night.
Henceforth let no woman believe a man's oath, let none believe that a man's speeches can be trustworthy. They, while their mind desires something and longs eagerly to gain it, nothing fear to swear, nothing spare to promise; but as soon as the lust of their greedy mind is satisfied, they fear not then their words, they heed not their perjuries.
Ah, what is more blessed than to put cares away, when the mind lays by its burden, and tired with labour of far travel we have come to our own home and rest on the couch we longed for? This it is which alone is worth all these toils.