285 quotes
These (literary) studies are the food of youth, and consolation of age; they adorn prosperity, and are the comfort and refuge of adversity; they are pleasant at home, and are no incumbrance abroad; they accompany us at night, in our travels, and in our rural retreats.
As I give thought to the matter, I find four causes for the apparent misery of old age; first, it withdraws us from active accomplishments; second, it renders the body less powerful; third, it deprives us of almost all forms of enjoyment; fourth, it stands not far from death.
But of what immense worth is it for the soul to be with itself, to live, as the phrase is, with itself, discharged from the service of lust, ambition, strife, enmities, desires of every kind! If one has some provision laid up, as it were, of study and learning, nothing is more enjoyable than the leisure of old age.
Cato Maior de Senectute – On Old Age (-44)
Does not, as fire dropped upon water is immediately extinguished and cooled, so, does not, I say, a false accusation, when brought in contact with a most pure and holy life, instantly fall and become extinguished?
While there are two ways of contending, one by discussion, the other by force, the former belonging properly to man, the latter to beasts, recourse must be had to the latter if there be no opportunity for employing the former.
De Officiis – On Duties (-44)
I will speak in a low voice, just so as to let the judges hear me. For men are not wanting who would be glad to excite that people against me and against every eminent man; and I will not assist them and enable them to do so more easily.
He who so interprets the supreme good as to disjoin it from virtue, and measures it by his own convenience, and not by the standard of right,—he, I say, if he be consistent with himself, and be not sometimes overcome by natural goodness, can cultivate neither friendship, nor justice, nor generosity.
He who believes this (atomism) may as well believe that if a great quantity of the one-and-twenty letters, composed either of gold or any other matter, were thrown upon the ground, they would fall into such order as legibly to form the Annals of Ennius. I doubt whether fortune could make a single verse of them.
What! You would convict me from my own words, and bring against me what I had said or written elsewhere. You may act in that manner with those who dispute by established rules. We live from hand to mouth, and say anything that strikes our mind with probability, so that we are the only people who are really at liberty."
Tusculanae Disputationes – Tusculan Disputations (-45)
On Duties (De Officiis) 1.33 (translated by Walter Miller)
Life's race-course is fixed; Nature has only a single path and that path is run but once, and to each stage of existence has been allotted its own appropriate quality; so that the weakness of childhood, the impetuosity of youth, the seriousness of middle life, the maturity of old age—each bears some of Nature's fruit, which must be garnered in its own season.
A room without books is like a body without a soul.
Disputed
The first duty of a man is the seeking after and the investigation of truth.
Disputed A Crowd of One: The Future of Individual Identity (2007)
For as lack of adornment is said to become some women, so this subtle oration, though without embellishment, gives delight.
Disputed
The administration of government, like a guardianship ought to be directed to the good of those who confer, not of those who receive the trust.
Attributed
Study carefully, the character of the one you recommend, lest their misconduct bring you shame.
Misattributed
Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.
Misattributed
The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government.
Misattributed
The following three quotes are sometimes wrongly attributed to Cicero. In fact, they come from a novel about Cicero by Taylor Caldwell, and are not found in any of Cicero's actual writings.
Misattributed
"The evil was not in bread and circuses, per se, but in the willingness of the people to sell their rights as free men for full bellies and the excitement of the games which would serve to distract them from the other human hungers which bread and circuses can never appease."
Misattributed