Ovid Quotes

122 Sourced Quotes

What we call birth
Is but a beginning to be something else
Than what we were before; and when we cease
To be that something, then we call it death.

Ovid
The healing art knows not how to remove crippling gout, it helps not the fearful dropsy.

Ovid
There is a place above, where Scorpio bent, In tail and arms surrounds a vast extent; In a wide circuit of the heavens he shines, And fills the place of two celestial signs.

Ovid
Ere land and sea and the all-covering sky Were made, in the whole world the countenance Of nature was the same, all one, well named Chaos, a raw and undivided mass, Naught but a lifeless bulk, with warring seeds Of ill-joined elements compressed together.

Ovid
Take this at least, this last advice, my son:
Keep a stiff rein, and move but gently on:
The coursers of themselves will run too fast,
Your art must be to moderate their haste.

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

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

Ovid
The same object will both wound and cure me.

Ovid
And thrusts the Scorpion with his bended bow.

Ovid