Catullus Quotes

53 Sourced Quotes

Oh this age! How tasteless and ill-bred it is!

Catullus
I hate and I love. Perhaps you ask why I do it? I don't know, but I feel it happening and am tortured.

Catullus
Give me a thousand kisses, and then a hundred,
Then another thousand, then a second hundred,
And then yet another thousand, then a hundred.

Catullus
There is nothing more silly than a silly laugh.

Catullus
If anything has happened to one who ever yearned and wished but never hoped, that is a rare pleasure of the soul.

Catullus
Mourn, ye Graces and Loves, and all you whom the Graces love. My lady's sparrow is dead, the sparrow, my lady's pet.

Catullus
Wandering through many countries and over many seas, I come, my brother, to these sorrowful obsequies, to present you with the last guerdon of death, and speak, though in vain, to your silent ashes.

Catullus
What is given by the gods more desirable than the fortunate hour?

Catullus
If a man can take any pleasure in recalling the thought of kindnesses done, when he thinks that he has been a true friend.

Catullus
May it live and last for more than one century.

Catullus
Mourn, you powers of Charm and Desire, and all you who are endowed with charm. My lady's sparrow is dead, the sparrow which was my lady's darling.

Catullus
Now he goes along the dark road, thither whence they say no one returns.

Catullus
Idleness ere now has ruined both kings and wealthy cities.

Catullus
Henceforth let no woman believe a man's oath, let none believe that a man's speeches can be trustworthy. They, while their mind desires something and longs eagerly to gain it, nothing fear to swear, nothing spare to promise; but as soon as the lust of their greedy mind is satisfied, they fear not then their words, they heed not their perjuries.

Catullus
All right and wrong, confounded in impious madness, turned from us the righteous will of the gods.

Catullus
To this point is my mind reduced by your fault, Lesbia, and has so ruined itself by its own devotion, that now it can neither wish you well though you should become the best of women, nor cease to love you though you do the worst that can be done.

Catullus
Poor Catullus, you should cease your folly.

Catullus
You ask me, Lesbia, how many kisses
it will take to make me fully satisfied?

Catullus
As a flower grows concealed in an enclosed garden, unknown to the cattle, bruised by no plough, which the breezes caress, the sun makes strong, and the rain brings out; many boys and many girls long for it.

Catullus
I would see a little Torquatus, stretching his baby hands from his mother's lap, smile a sweet smile at his father with lips half parted.

Catullus
I hate and love. You ask, perhaps, how can that be? I know not, but I feel the agony.

Catullus
To whom shall I give my nice new little book polished dry with pumice?

Catullus
Like a god he seems to me, above the gods, if so may be, who sitting often close to you may see and hear you sweetly laughing, which snatches away all the senses from poor me.

Catullus
Godlike the man who
sits at her side, who
watches and catches
that laughter
which (softly) tears me
to tatters: nothing is
left of me, each time
I see her...

Catullus
But what a woman says to her lusting lover it is best to write in wind and swift-flowing water.

Catullus