Martial Quotes

68 Sourced Quotes

Your seventh wife, Phileros, is now being buried in your field. No man's field brings him greater profit than yours, Phileros.

Martial
I am a shell-fish just come from being saturated with the waters of the Lucrine lake, near Baiae; but now I luxuriously thrust for noble pickle.

Martial
All your female friends are either old or ugly; nay, more ugly than old women usually are. These you lead about in your train, and drag with you to feasts, porticos and theaters. Thus, Fabulla, you seem handsome, thus you seem young.

Martial
While you cannot resolve what you are, at last you will be nothing.

Martial
Not hard be the turf that covers her soft bones, be not heavy upon her, earth; she was not heavy upon you.
On a dead child

Martial
The bee is enclosed, and shines preserved in amber, so that it seems enshrined in its own nectar.

Martial
If your slave commits a fault, do not smash his teeth with your fists; give him some of the (hard) biscuit which famous Rhodes has sent you.

Martial
Selius affirms, in heaven no gods there are: And while he thrives, and they their thunder spare, His daring tenet to the world seems fair.

Martial
Believing, hear, what you deserve to hear:
Your birthday as my own to me is dear…
But yours gives most; for mine did only lend
Me to the world; yours gave to me a friend.

Martial
Although the words run speedily, the hand is swifter than them; the tongue has not yet, the hand has already completed its work.

Martial
Each of us feels the good days speed and depart, and they're lost to us and counted against us.

Martial
You invite no one except (someone) with whom you are bathed, Cotta.
And only baths provide guest(s) for you.
I was wondering why you had never called me, Cotta:
Now I know that nude me was displeasing to you.

Martial
Virtue extends our days: he lives two lives who relives his past with pleasure.

Martial
The things that make life happier, most genial Martial, are these: means not acquired by labour, but bequeathed; fields not unkindly, an ever-blazing hearth.

Martial
Conceal a flaw, and the world will imagine the worst.

Martial
I don't like you, Sabidius, I can't say why; But I can say this: I don't like you, Sabidius.

Martial
Difficult or easy, pleasant or bitter, you are the same you: I cannot live with you—or without you.

Martial
He who refuses nothing... will soon have nothing to refuse.

Martial
You puff the poets of other days,
The living you deplore.
Spare me the accolade: your praise
Is not worth dying for.

Martial
Glory comes too late, after one as been reduced to ashes.

Martial
If poor you are, poor you will always be,
For wealth's now given to none but to the rich.

Martial
They praise those verses, yes, but read something else.

Martial
I don't love you, Sabidius, and I can't tell you why; all I can tell you is this, that I don't love you.

Martial
You'll get no laurel crown for outrunning a burro.

Martial
Captious, yet complaisant, sweet and bitter too, I cannot with thee live, nor yet without thee.

Martial
You ask what a nice girl will do? She won't give an inch, but she won't say no.

Martial
Be content to be what you are, and prefer nothing to it. Neither fear your death's day nor long for it.

Martial
You complain, friend Swift, of the length of my epigrams, but you yourself write nothing. Yours are shorter.

Martial
Stop abusing my verses, or publish some of your own.

Martial
You're obstinate, pliant, merry, morose, all at once. For me there's no living with you, or without you.

Martial