Cicero Quotes

226 Sourced Quotes

As a field, though fertile, cannot yield a harvest without cultivation, no more can the mind without learning; each is feeble without the other.

Cicero
I would rather be wrong with Plato than right with such men as these [the Pythagoreans].

Cicero
History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life, and brings us tidings of antiquity.

Cicero
Thus nature has no love for solitude, and always leans, as it were, on some support; and the sweetest support is found in the most intimate friendship.

Cicero
From the beginning of the world it has been ordained that certain signs must needs precede certain events.

Cicero
For he delivers his opinions as though he were living in Plato's Republic rather than among the dregs of Romulus.
Of M. Porcius Cato, the Younger

Cicero
As for me, I cease not to advocate peace. It may be on unjust terms, but even so it is more expedient than the justest of civil wars.

Cicero
I look upon the pleasure which we take in a garden as one of the most innocent delights in human life... It gives us a great insight into the contrivance and wisdom of Nature, and suggests innumerable subjects for meditation.

Cicero
When the young die I am reminded of a strong flame extinguished by a torrent; but when old men die it is as if a fire had gone out without the use of force and of its own accord, after the fuel had been consumed; and, just as apples when they are green are with difficulty plucked from the tree, but when ripe and mellow fall of themselves, so, with the young, death comes as a result of force, while with the old it is the result of ripeness.

Cicero
He does not seem to me to be a free man who does not sometimes do nothing.

Cicero
Yield, ye arms, to the toga; to civic praise, ye laurels.

Cicero
Where pleasure prevails, all the greatest virtues will lose their power.

Cicero
Freedom suppressed and again regained bites with keener fangs than freedom never endangered.

Cicero
O immortal gods! Men do not realize how great a revenue parsimony can be!

Cicero
But what is the benefit (you have done me)? That you did not kill me at Brundisium?

Cicero
Friendship embraces innumerable ends; turn where you will it is ever at your side; no barrier shuts it out; it is never untimely and never in the way.

Cicero
For the life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.

Cicero
A dissolute and intemperate youth hands down the body to old age in a worn-out state.

Cicero
No power is strong enough to be lasting if it labors under the weight of fear.

Cicero
It is graceful in a man to think and to speak with propriety, to act with deliberation, and in every occurrence of life to find out and persevere in the truth. On the other hand, to be imposed upon, to mistake, to falter, and to be deceived, is as ungraceful as to rave or to be insane.

Cicero
For what people have always sought is equality before the law. For rights that were not open to all alike would be no rights.

Cicero
Nature loves nothing solitary, and always reaches out to something, as a support, which ever in the sincerest friend is most delightful.

Cicero
If nature does not ratify law, then all the virtues may lose their sway.

Cicero
Whatever is graceful is virtuous, and whatever is virtuous is graceful.

Cicero
The nearer I approach death the more I feel like one who is in sight of land at last and is about to anchor in one's home port after a long voyage.

Cicero
It is difficult to set bounds to the price unless you first set bounds to the wish.

Cicero
The happiest end of life is this: when the mind and the other senses being unimpaired, the same nature which put it together takes asunder her own work.

Cicero
If a man should ascend alone into heaven and behold clearly the structure of the universe and the beauty of the stars, there would be no pleasure for him in the awe-inspiring sight, which would have filled him with delight if he had had someone to whom he could describe what he had seen.

Cicero
Exile is terrible to those who have, as it were, a circumscribed habitation; but not to those who look upon the whole globe but as one city.

Cicero
The life of the dead consists in the recollection cherished of them by the living.

Cicero