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Ill have I brook’d that nobler foes
Should triumph o’er my dying woes:
But, scorn of nature, forced to lie
And take thy taunts, is twice to die.

Fortes indigne tuli
Mihi insultare: te, nature dedecus,
Quod ferre certe cogor, bis videor mori.

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Notes from Wikiquote

Phaedrus, 1, 21, 10. The Dying Lion to the Ass that kicked him. | Reported in: Classical and Foreign Quotations, 3rd ed. (1904), no. 819.

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You will soon break the bow if you keep it always stretched.

Endure this evil lest a worse come upon you.

By this story [The Fox and the Raven] it is shown how much ingenuity avails, and how wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.

He carried and nourished in his breast a snake, tender-hearted against his own interest.

O that such beauty should be so devoid of understanding!

Fables, I, 7, 2. Reported in Hoyt's (1922)

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Attribution

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