Cicero Quotes

226 Sourced Quotes

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

Cicero
Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.

Cicero
To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child. For what is man's lifetime unless the memory of past events is woven with those of earlier times?

Cicero
What sweetness is left in life, if you take away friendship? Robbing life of friendship is like robbing the world of the sun.

Cicero
Death is not natural for a state as it is for a human being, for whom death is not only necessary, but frequently even desirable.

Cicero
Take from a man his reputation for probity, and the more shrewd and clever he is, the more hated and mistrusted he becomes.

Cicero
For one day spent well, and agreeably to your precepts, is preferable to an eternity of error.

Cicero
He departed, he withdrew, he strode off, he broke forth.

Cicero
It is besides necessary that whoever is brave should be a man of great soul.

Cicero
To what length will you abuse our patience, Catiline?

Cicero
This is the part of a great man, after he has maturely weighed all circumstances, to punish the guilty, to spare the many, and in every state of fortune not to depart from an upright, virtuous conduct.

Cicero
According to Cato the Elder, Scipio Africanus was wont to say that he was never less at leisure than when at leisure, nor less alone than when alone.

Cicero
Constant practice devoted to one subject often prevails over both ability and skill.

Cicero
There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it.

Cicero
Who does not see this is senseless; who sees and still approves is ungodly.

Cicero
For if that last day does not occasion an entire extinction, but a change of abode only, what can be more desirable? And if it, on the other hand, destroys and absolutely puts an end to us, what can be preferable to having a deep sleep fall on us in the midst of the fatigues of life and, being thus overtaken, to sleep to eternity?

Cicero
Old age: the crown of life, our play's last act.

Cicero
The recovery of freedom is so splendid a thing that we must not shun even death when seeking to recover it.

Cicero
Nothing stands out so conspicuously, or remains so firmly fixed in the memory, as something which you have blundered.

Cicero
I wonder... that a soothsayer doesn't laugh when he sees another soothsayer.

Cicero
History is truly the witness of times past, the light of truth, the life of memory, the teacher of life, the messenger of antiquity; whose voice, but the orator's, can entrust her to immortality?

Cicero
For it is not having insufficient knowledge, but persisting a long time in insufficient knowledge that is shameful; since the one is assumed to be a disease common to all, but the other is assumed to be a flaw to an individual.

Cicero
The higher we are placed, the more humbly we should walk.

Cicero
It is not only arrogant, but it is profligate, for a man to disregard the world's opinion of himself.

Cicero
That which stands first, and is most to be desired by all happy, honest and healthy-minded men, is dignified leisure.

Cicero