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Virgil Quotes

Publius Vergilius Maro (October 15, 70 BC – September 21, 19 BC), known in English as Virgil or Vergil, was a Roman poet, the author of the Eclogues, the Georgics and the Aeneid, the last being an epic poem of twelve books that became the Roman Empire's national epic.

Poets

Also known as: Bucolics, Publius Vergilius Maro, Publius Virgilius Maro, Vergil, Vergilius, Virgilio

Random Virgil quote

224 quotes

There is no salvation in war.

Aeneid (-19)

Give lilies with full hands.

Aeneid (-19)

I wait with listening ears.

Aeneid (-19)

A snake lurks in the grass.

Fair Clymene was telling o'er the tale
Of Vulcan's idle vigilance and the stealth
Of Mars' sweet rapine, and from Chaos old
Counted the jostling love-joys of the Gods.

With charms did Circe turne and change Ulisses fellowes shapes

I wrote these lines; another wears the bays:
Thus you for others build your nests, O birds:
Thus you for others bear your fleece, O sheep:
Thus you for others honey make, O bees:
Thus you for others drag the plough, O kine.

Claudius Donatus. Delphin ed. of Life of Vergil (1830)

There are twin Gates of Sleep.
One, they say, is called the Gate of Horn
and it offers easy passage to all true shades.
The other glistens with ivory, radiant, flawless,
but through it the dead send false dreams up toward the sky.

Aeneid (-19)

Know, first, that heav'n, and earth's compacted frame,
And flowing waters, and the starry flame,
And both the radiant lights, one common soul
Inspires and feeds, and animates the whole.
This active mind, infus'd thro' all the space,
Unites and mingles with the mighty mass.

Liberty, which, though late, yet cast an eye upon me in my inactive time of life, after my beard began to fall off with a greyish hue when I shaved: yet on me she cast her eye, and after a long period of slavery came at last.

They attack this one man with their hate and their shower of weapons. But he is like some rock which stretches into the vast sea and which, exposed to the fury of the winds and beaten against by the waves, endures all the violence and threats of heaven and sea, himself standing unmoved.

Here are troops of men
who had suffered wounds, fighting to save their country,
and those who had been pure priests while still alive,
and the faithful poets whose songs were fit for Phoebus;
those who enriched our lives with the newfound arts they forged
and those we remember well for the good they did mankind.

Let fraud supply the want of force in war.

Misattributed

At times the world sees straight, but many times the world goes astray.

Misattributed

Life's short span forbids us to enter on far reaching hopes.

Misattributed

As money grows, care follows it and the hunger for more.

Misattributed

It is easier to steal the club of Hercules than a line from Homer.

Attributed

I sang of pastures, farms, and commanders.

Attributed

The noblest motive is the public good.

Misattributed

I made these little verses, another took the honor.

Attributed

Attribution

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