Virgil Quotes

292 Sourced Quotes

A sad thing is a wolf in the fold, rain on ripe corn, wind in the trees, the anger of Amaryllis.

Virgil
A loftier task the bard essays:
The horizon broadens on his gaze.

Virgil
Who are you running from, you crazy man?…Even gods have lived in the woods like me.

Virgil
If men and mortal arms ye slight,
Know there are gods who watch o'er right.

Virgil
More various colours thro' his body run,
Than Iris when her bow imbibes the sun.

Virgil
Ye realms, yet unreveal'd to human sight,
Ye gods who rule the regions of the night,
Ye gliding ghosts, permit me to relate
The mystic wonders of your silent state!

Virgil
Fury and wrath within me rave,
And tempt me to a warrior's grave.

Virgil
Like you, an alien in a land unknown,
I learn to pity woes so like my own.

Virgil
The gods, if gods to goodness are inclined;
If acts of mercy touch their heavenly mind,
And, more than all the gods, your generous heart.
Conscious of worth, requite its own desert!

Virgil
The Shepherd, Corydon, burned with love for handsome Alexis, his master's favourite, but he was not getting what he hoped for.

Virgil
But Aetna hard at hand With hideous ruin thunders, and anon Shoots a dark cloud to heaven or whirling smoke Pitch-black, with glowing ashes, and aloft Heaves balls of fire, and licks the stars, anon Rocks and the uptorn entrails of the hill Spews forth, and heaps the molten stones in air Booming, and from his lowest depth upboils.

Virgil
O accursed hunger of gold, to what dost thou not compel human hearts!

Virgil
I will be gone from here and sing my songs/ In the forest wilderness where the wild beasts are,/ And carve in letters on the little trees/ The story of my love, and as the trees/ Will grow letters too will grow, to cry/ In a louder voice the story of my love.

Virgil
E'en in mid-harvest, while the jocund swain Pluck'd from the brittle stalk the golden grain, Oft have I seen the war of winds contend, And prone on earth th' infuriate storm descend, Waste far and wide, and by the roots uptorn, The heavy harvest sweep through ether borne, As light straw and rapid stubble fly In dark'ning whirlwinds round the wintry sky.

Virgil
In his deepest heart there surge tremendous shame and madness mixed with sorrow and love whipped on by frenzy and a courage aware of its own worth.

Virgil
Oft, too, when wind is toward, the stars thou'lt see From heaven shoot headlong, and through murky night Long trails of fire white-glistening in their wake.

Virgil
May the Muses sweet, Whose rites I hear with mighty passion pierced, Receive, and show the paths and stars of heaven, The sun's eclipses and the labouring moons.

Virgil
Maybe one day we shall be glad to remember even these hardships.

Virgil
How blest the sage! Whose soul can pierce each cause Of changeful Nature, and her wondrous laws.

Virgil
Rumor goes forth at once, Rumor than whom No other speedier evil thing exists; She thrives by rapid movement, and acquires Strength as she goes; small at the first from fear, She presently uplifts herself aloft, And stalks upon the ground and hides her head Among the clouds.

Virgil
As oft, from heaven unfixed, shoot flying stars, And trail their locks behind them.

Virgil
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.

Virgil