Marcus Tullius Cicero Quotes

I cannot find a faithful message-bearer," he wrote to his friend, the scholar Atticus. "How few are they who are able to carry a rather weighty letter without lightening it by reading.

The evil implanted in man by nature spreads so imperceptibly, when the habit of wrong-doing is unchecked, that he himself can set no limit to his shamelessness.

What one has, one ought to use: and whatever he does he should do with all his might.

If you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away but the good remains; if you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains.

The divinity who rules within us, forbids us to leave this world without his command.

As the scale of the balance must give way to the weight that presses it down, so the mind must of necessity yield to demonstration.

How great an evil do you see that may have been announced by you against the Republic? - Videtis quantum scelus contra rem publicam vobis nuntiatum sit?

It is pleasant to recall past troubles.

All soils are not fertile.

The name of peace is sweet, and the thing itself is beneficial, but there is a great difference between peace and servitude. Peace is freedom in tranquillity, servitude is the worst of all evils, to be resisted not only by war, but even by death.

Man's best support is a very dear friend.

There is nothing proper about what you are doing, soldier, but do try to kill me properly.

Our span of life is brief, but is long enough for us to live well and honestly.

The first bond of society is marriage.

Cannot people realize how large an income is thrift?

The gardener plants trees, not one berry of which he will ever see: and shall not a public man plant laws, institutions, government, in short, under the same conditions?

The soil of their native land is dear to all the hearts of mankind.

Time puts an end to speculation in opinions, and confirms the laws of nature.

A man's own manner and character is what most becomes him.

Superstition is an unreasoning fear of God.

Be a pattern to others and then all will go well.

Of all the rewards of virtue, . . . the most splendid is fame, for it is fame alone that can offer us the memory of posterity.

Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.

If the truth were self-evident, eloquence would be unnecessary.

"I believe that no characteristic is so distinctively human as the sense of indebtedness we feel, not necessarily for a favor received, but even for the slightest evidence of kindness; and there is nothing so boorish, savage, inhuman as to appear to be overwhelmed by a favor, let alone unworthy of it."

Friendship is infinitely better than kindness.

Hatreds not vowed and concealed are to be feared more than those openly declared.

Cicero is dead! Cicero is born! The laughter has filled me, filled me so very completely. I am the laughter. I am the jester. The soul that has served as my constant companion for so long has breached the veil of the Void finally and forever. It is now in me. It is me. The world has seen the last of Cicero the man. Behold Cicero, Fool of Hearts - laughter incarnate!

Everyone has his besetting sin.

If the soul has food for study and learning, nothing is more delightful than an old age of leisure.

Freedom suppressed and again regained bites with keener fangs than freedom never endangered.

We must conceive of this whole universe as one commonwealth of which both gods and men are members.

The multitude of fools is a protection to the wise.

Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable.

No grief is so acute but time ameliorates it.

We are born poets. we become orators.

What nobler employment, or more valuable to the state, than that of the man who instructs the rising generation?

No liberal man would impute a charge of unsteadiness to another for having changed his opinion.

It is a crime to put a Roman citizen in chains, it is an enormity to flog one, sheer murder to slay one: what, then, shall I say of crucifixion? It is impossible to find the word for such an abomination.

In the very books in which philosophers bid us scorn fame, they inscribe their names.

To remain ignorant of history is to remain forever a child

In all matters, before beginning, a diligent preparation should be made.

Work makes a callus against grief.

More laws, less justice.

This excessive licence, which the anarchists think is the only true freedom, provides the stock, as it were, from which a tyrant grows.

He who has a garden and a library wants for nothing.

Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century: Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others; Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected; Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it; Refusing to set aside trivial preferences; Neglecting development and refinement of the mind; Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.

What then is freedom? The power to live as one wishes.