Ovid Quotes

122 Sourced Quotes

'Tis hard, I admit, yet virtue aims at what is hard, and gratitude for such a service will be all the greater.

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

Ovid
Love is a child and naked; he has years that know no meanness, and he has no clothes, so that he is open in his ways.

Ovid
Envy can scarcely hold back her tears, when she sees nothing to cry about.

Ovid
When all the other animals, downcast looked upon the earth, [Prometheus] gave a face raised on high to man, and commanded him to see the sky and raise his high eyes to the stars.

Ovid
Let others praise the ancient times; I am glad I was born in these.

Ovid
Hence come the hardness of our race and our endurance of toil; and we give proof from what origin we are sprung.

Ovid
It is convenient that there be gods, and, as it is convenient, let us believe that there are.

Ovid
Nor can one easily find among many thousands a single man who considers virtue its own reward. The very glory of a good deed, if it lacks reward, affects them not; unrewarded uprightness brings them regret. Nothing but profit is prized.

Ovid
Love yields to business. If you seek a way out of love, be busy; you'll be safe then.

Ovid
No species remains constant: that great renovator of matter
Nature, endlessly fashions new forms from old: there's nothing in the whole universe that perishes, believe me; rather it renews and varies its substance. What we describe as birth is no more than incipient change from a prior state, while dying is merely to quit it. Though the parts may be transported hither and thither, the sum of all matter is constant.

Ovid
What lies hid is unknown, and there is no desire for the unknown.

Ovid
Perhaps too my name will be joined to theirs [the names of famous poets].

Ovid
Thus all things are but altered, nothing dies.

Ovid
If you want to be loved, be lovable.

Ovid
I am the poet of the poor, because I was poor when I loved; since I could not give gifts, I gave words.

Ovid
Let him who loves, where love success may find,
Spread all his sails before the prosperous wind;
But let poor youths who female scorn endure,
And hopeless burn, repair to me for cure.

Ovid
It is annoying to be honest to no purpose.

Ovid
Beauty's a fragile boon, and the years are quick to destroy it,
Always diminished with time, never enduring too long.
Violet's always fade, and the bloom departs from the lily;
When the roses are gone, nothing is left but the thorn.

Ovid
Then the omnipotent Father with his thunder made Olympus tremble, and from Ossa hurled Pelion.

Ovid
Golden was that first age, which, with no one to compel, without a law, of its own will, kept faith and did the right.

Ovid
Every lover is a warrior, and Cupid has his camps.

Ovid
Give way to your opponent; thus will you gain the crown of victory.

Ovid
We take no pleasure in permitted joys.
But what's forbidden is more keenly sought.

Ovid
I grabbed a pile of dust, and holding it up, foolishly asked for as many birthdays as the grains of dust, I forgot to ask that they be years of youth.

Ovid
Women can always be caught; that's the first rule of the game.

Ovid
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