Ovid Quotes

122 Sourced Quotes

Here Jove with Hermes came; but in disguise
Of mortal men conceal'd their deities;
One laid aside his thunder, one his rod

Ovid
I have myself seen what once was solid land changed into sea; and again I have seen land made from the sea.

Ovid
Niobe would have been called most blessed of mothers,
had she not seemed so herself.

Ovid
She that weds well will wisely match her love, Nor be below her husband nor above.

Ovid
Tis not always in a physician's power to cure the sick; at times the disease is stronger than trained art.

Ovid
Virtue and vice, evil and good, are siblings, or next-door neighbors, Easy to make mistakes, hard to tell them apart.

Ovid
Time was when genius was more precious than gold, but
now to have nothing is monstrous barbarism.

Ovid
He who holds the hook is aware in what waters many fish are swimming.

Ovid
The raven once in snowy plumes was drest,
White as the whitest dove's unsullied breast,
Fair as the guardian of the Capitol,
Soft as the swan; a large and lovely fowl
His tongue, his prating tongue had changed him quite
To sooty blackness from the purest white.

Ovid
How little you know about the age you live in if you think that honey is sweeter than cash in hand

Ovid
Calumny ever pursues the great, even as the winds hurl themselves on high places.

Ovid
But that which is incurable must be cut away with the knife, lest the untainted part also draw infection.

Ovid
Love is born of idleness and, once born, by idleness is fostered.

Ovid
There is a high way, easily seen when the sky is clear. 'Tis called the Milky Way, famed for its shining whiteness.

Ovid
As the mind of each man is conscious of good or evil, so does he conceive within his breast hope or fear, according to his actions.

Ovid
Seeking is all very well, but holding requires greater talent: Seeking involves some luck; now the demand is for skill.

Ovid
For in this strange anatomy we wear, the head has greater powers than the hand; the spirit, heart, and mind are over all.

Ovid
Friendship is but a name, faith is an empty name. Alas,
it is not safe to praise to a friend the object of your love;
as soon as he believes your praises, he slips into your place.

Ovid
I have never injured anybody with a mordant poem; my
verse contains charges against nobody. Ingenuous, I have
shunned wit steeped in venom--not a letter of mine is dipped
in poisonous jest.

Ovid
See that you promise: what harm is there in promise? In
promises anyone can be rich.

Ovid
The same object will both wound and cure me.

Ovid
For the sharp medic'cine is the patient's cure.

Ovid
Love is a naked child: do you think he has pockets for money?

Ovid
And thrusts the Scorpion with his bended bow.

Ovid
Ev'n slime begets the frog's loquacious race: Short of their feet at first, in little space With arms, and legs endu'd, long leaps they take Rais'd on their hinder parts, and swim the lake, And waves repel: for Nature gives their kind, To that intent, a length of legs behind.

Ovid
They come to see, they come that they themselves may be seen.
In Latin: Spectatum veniunt, veniunt spectentur ut ipse.

Ovid
Struggling over my fickle heart, love draws it now this
way, and now hate that--but love, I think, is winning. I
will hate, if I have strength; if not, I shall love unwilling.

Ovid
We beg one hour of death, that neither she
With widow's tears may live to bury me,
Nor weeping I, with wither'd arms, may bear
My breathless Baucis to the sepulchre.

Ovid
Stop it at the start, it's late for medicine to be prepared when disease has grown strong through long delays.

Ovid
Sleep, thou repose of all things; sleep, thou gentlest of the deities; thou peace of the mind, from which care flies; who doest soothe the hearts of men wearied with the toils of the day, and refittest them for labor.

Ovid