Virgil - Aeneid

198 Sourced Quotes

View all Virgil Quotes
My chief, let Fate cry on or back,
'Tis ours to follow, nothing slack:
Whatever betide, he only cures
The stroke of Fortune who endures.

Virgil
High praises, endless honors, you have won,
And mighty trophies, with your worthy son!
Two gods a silly woman have undone!

Virgil
Why thus, unforced, should we so tamely yield,
And, ere the trumpet sounds, resign the field?

Virgil
This to a tyrant master sold
His native land for cursed gold.

Virgil
The fields of Neptune take a purple dye.

Virgil
If Jove and heaven my just desires deny,
Hell shall the pow'r of heaven and Jove supply.

Virgil
So vast was the struggle to found the Roman state.

Virgil
I make no distinction between Trojan and Tyrian.

Virgil
You, Roman, make your task to rule nations by your government (these shall be your skills), to impose ordered ways upon a state of peace, to spare those who have submitted and to subdue the arrogant.

Virgil
Alas, pitiable boy—if only you might break your cruel fate!—you are to be Marcellus. [People,] give me lilies in armfuls.

Virgil
O impotence of man's frail mind
To fate and to the future blind,
Presumptuous and o'erweening still
When Fortune follows at its will!

Virgil
The souls that throng the flood
Are those to whom, by Fate, are other bodies owed,
In Lethe's lake they long oblivion taste,
Of future life secure, forgetful of the past.

Virgil
Darkling they went under the lonely night through the shadow and through the empty dwellings and unsubstantial realms of Hades.

Virgil
We Trojans are at an end, Ilium has ended and the vast glory of the Trojans.

Virgil
How altered from the man we knew,
Our Hector, who from day's long toil
Comes radiant in Achilles' spoil.

Virgil
Be this your nobler praise in times to come,
These your imperial arts, ye sons of Rome!
O'er distant realms to stretch your awful sway,
To bid those nations tremble and obey;
To crush the proud, the suppliant foe to rear,
To give mankind a peace, or shake the world with war.

Virgil
That happy place, the green groves of the dwelling of the blest.

Virgil
Who knows what changeful fortune may produce?

Virgil
Now, prostrate by an unmeant wound,
In death he welters on the ground,
And gazing on Italian skies
Of his loved Argos dreams, and dies.

Virgil
Sighs, groans, and tears, proclaim his inward pains,
But the firm purpose of his heart remains.

Virgil
Let me be suffered to extend
Compassion to a hapless friend.

Virgil
Believe one who has proved it. Believe an expert.

Virgil
Despair, and rage, and love divide her heart;
Despair and rage had some, but love the greater part.

Virgil
I was amazed, my hair stood on end, and my voice stuck in my throat.

Virgil
A woman is always a fickle, unstable thing.

Virgil
Nay, had I a hundred tongues, a hundred mouths, and voice of iron, I could not sum up all the forms of crime, or rehearse all the tales of torments.

Virgil
In wild confusion sways the crowd:
Each takes his side and all are loud.

Virgil
If I am unable to make the gods above relent, I shall move Hell.

Virgil
There in the bottom of the pit
Sits Theseus, and will ever sit.

Virgil
Fear is the proof of a degenerate mind.

Virgil