Roman Author Quotes

Virgil

Ovid

Terence

Horace

Catullus

Lucan

I am human: nothing human is alien to me.

In Latin: Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto.

He plants trees to benefit another generation.

Caecilius Statius

I sing of arms and of a man: his fate
had made him fugitive; he was the first
to journey from the coasts of Troy as far
as Italy and the Lavinian shores
Across the lands and waters he was battered
beneath the violence of the high ones for
the savage Juno's unforgetting anger.

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

An adversary is more hurt by desertion than by slaughter.

Some laws are not written, but are more decisive than any written law.

Seneca the Elder

A mountain was in labour, sending forth dreadful groans, and there was in the region the highest expectation. After all, it brought forth a mouse.

Another one of the old poets, whose name has escaped my memory at present, called Truth the daughter of Time.

Laying aside also all considerations of works and engines of war, the invention of which has long since reached its limit, and for the improvement of which I see no further hope in the applied arts, I shall recognize the following types of stratagems connected with siege operations....

To this point is my mind reduced by your fault, Lesbia, and has so ruined itself by its own devotion, that now it can neither wish you well though you should become the best of women, nor cease to love you though you do the worst that can be done.

Wise were the kings who never chose a friend till with full cups they had unmasked his soul, and seen the bottom of his deepest thoughts.

Near to Bootes the bright Crown is view'd And shines with stars of different magnitude: Or placed in front above the rest displays A vigorous light, and dwarfs surprising rays. This shone, since Theseus first his faith betray'd, The monument of the forsaken maid.

Marcus Manilius

His all, as not for self
Brought into being, but for all the world:
Such was his creed.

Vast as the starry Serpent, that on high Tracks the clear ether, and divides the sky, And southward winding from the Northern Wain, Shoots to remoter spheres its glittering train.