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Cicero on Birthday

b. 106 BC

← All quotes by Cicero

18 quotes

You must become an old man in good time if you wish to be an old man long.

Plato divinely calls pleasure the bait of evil, inasmuch as men are caught by it as fish by a hook.

Time destroys the groundless conceits of men; it confirms decisions founded on reality.

Pleasure blinds (so to speak) the eyes of the mind, and has no fellowship with virtue.

We are not born, we do not live for ourselves alone; our country, our friends, have a share in us.

In everything satiety closely follows the greatest pleasures.

It is a common saying that many pecks of salt must be eaten before the duties of friendship can be discharged.

Let flattery, the handmaid of the vices, be far removed (from friendship).

A sensual and intemperate youth hands over a worn-out body to old age.

No one is so old that he does not think he could live another year.

Friendship makes prosperity brighter, while it lightens adversity by sharing its griefs and anxieties.

You must therefore love me, myself, and not my circumstances, if we are to be real friends.

Friendship makes prosperity more shining and lessens adversity by dividing and sharing it.

For friendship makes prosperity more shining and lessens adversity by dividing and sharing it.

Laelius De Amicitia – Laelius On Friendship (-44)

In our amusements a certain limit is to be placed that we may not devote ourselves to a life of pleasure and thence fall into immorality.

A friend is, as it were, a second self.

O what times (are these)! what morals!

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.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Cicero (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.