Catullus Quotes

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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

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

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

He seems to me to be like a God,
even superior to the Gods, if it is
permitted to say so, the man who sits
gazing on you all day and listens to
your sweet laughter.

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 I love: why I do so you may well ask. I do not know, but I feel it happen and am in agony.

Catullus

Ah, what is more blessed than to put cares away!

Catullus

Ye Cupids, droop each little head,
Nor let your wings with joy be spread:
My Lesbia's favourite bird is dead,
Whom dearer than her eyes she loved.

Catullus

And forever, O my brother, hail and farewell!

Catullus

Whatever it is, wherever he is, whatever he is doing, he smiles: it is a malady he has, neither an elegant one as I think, nor in good taste.

Catullus

Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love, and let us reckon all the murmurs of more censorious old men as worth one farthing. Suns can set and come again: for us, when once our brief light has set, one everlasting night is to be slept.

Catullus

I hate and I love. And if you ask me how, I do not know: I only feel it, and I am torn in two.

Catullus

May it live and last for more than one century.

Catullus

By many lands and over many a wave
I come, my brother, to your piteous grave,
To bring you the last offering in death
And o'er dumb dust expend an idle breath…
Yet take these gifts, brought as our fathers bade
For sorrow's tribute to the passing shade;
A brother's tears have wet them o'er and o'er;
And so, my brother, hail, and farewell evermore!

Catullus

Let us live and love, my Lesbia, and value at a penny all the talk of crabbed old men. Suns may set and rise again: for us, when our brief light has set, there's the sleep of perpetual night. Give me a thousand kisses.

Catullus

There is nothing more silly than a silly laugh.

Catullus

Catullus, the worst of all poets, gives you [Marcus Tullius] his warmest thanks; he being as much the worst of all poets as you are the best of all patrons.

Catullus

The evening is come; rise up, ye youths. Vesper from Olympus now at last is just raising his long-looked-for light.

Catullus

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

Catullus

I hate and I love. Why I do so, perhaps you ask. I know not, but I feel it and I am in torment.

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

What women say to lovers, you'll agree, One writes on running water or on air.

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

O ye gods, grant me this in return for my piety.

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

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

Catullus

Catullus

Catullus

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Born: 84 BC

Died: 54 BC (aged 30)

Bio: Gaius Valerius Catullus was a Latin poet of the late Roman Republic who wrote in the neoteric style of poetry. His surviving works are still read widely, and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art.

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