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The fashions of human affairs are brief and changeable, and fortune never remains long indulgent.

— Quintus Curtius Rufus

Breves et mutabiles vices rerum sunt, et fortuna nunquam simpliciter indulget.

Original text (Latin)

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Notes from Wikiquote

14, 20.

Topics

Luck

More quotes by Quintus Curtius Rufus

Prosperity can change man's nature; and seldom is any one cautious enough to resist the effects of good fortune.

Nature has placed nothing so high that virtue cannot reach it.

The deepest rivers flow with the least sound.

The cowardly dog barks more violently than it bites.

A spark neglected has often raised a conflagration.

All Quintus Curtius Rufus quotes →

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O Fortune, cruellest of heavenly powers,
Why make such game of this poor life of ours?

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Vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave.

Edward Gibbon The History of the Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire (1776)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Quintus Curtius Rufus (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.