Marcus Tullius Cicero Quotes (428 Quotes)

He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason.

As you have sown so shall you reap.

What is thine is mine, and all mine is thine.

The study and knowledge of the universe would somehow be lame and defective were no practical results to follow.

Nothing is more noble, nothing more venerable than fidelity. Faithfulness and truth are the most sacred excellences and endowments of the human mind.

Let reason govern desire.

The greater the difficulty, the greater the glory.

Never less idle than when free from work, nor less alone than when completely alone.

No wise man ever thought that a traitor should be trusted.

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.

It is as hard for the good to suspect evil As it is for the bad to suspect good.

Constant practice devoted to one subject often outdoes both intelligence and skill. Assiduus usus uni rei deditus et ingenium et artem saepe vincit.

Ability without honor is useless.

The fatherland is the common parent of us all. Patria est communis omnium parens.

We are all drawn by our eagerness for praise. Trahimur omnes laudis studio.

When you are aspiring to the highest place, it is honorable to reach the second or even the third rank.

The rule of friendship means there should be mutual sympathy between them, each supplying what the other lacks and trying to benefit the other, always using friendly and sincere words.

There is no opinion so absurd that some philosopher will not express it.

I never admire another's fortune so much that I became dissatisfied with my own.

Since an intelligence common to us all makes things known to us and formulates them in our minds, honorable actions are ascribed by us to virtue, and dishonorable actions to vice and only a madman would conclude that these judgments are matters of opinion, and not fixed by nature.

In a disordered mind, as in a disordered body, soundness of health is impossible.

The man who backbites an absent friend, nay, who does not stand up for him when another blames him, the man who angles for bursts of laughter and for the repute of a wit, who can invent what he never saw, who cannot keep a secret - that man is black at heart mark and avoid him.

Just as the soul fills the body, so God fills the world. Just as the soul bears the body, so God endures the world. Just as the soul sees but is not seen, so God sees but is not seen. Just as the soul feeds the body, so God gives food to the world.

The following passage is one of those cited by Copernicus himself in his preface to De Revolutionibus 'The Syracusan Hicetas, as Theophrastus asserts, holds the view that the heaven, sun, moon, stars, and in short all of the things on high are stationary, and that nothing in the world is in motion except the earth, which by revolving and twisting round its axis with extreme velocity produces all the same results as would be produced if the earth were stationary and the heaven in motion....'

Reason is the mistress and queen of all things.

By doubting we come at truth.

There is something in the nature of things which the mind of man, which reason, which human power cannot effect, and certainly that which produces this must be better than man. What can this be but God.

Nature has no love for solitude, and always leans, as it were, on some support and the sweetest support is found in the most intimate friendship.

Brevity is a great charm of eloquence.

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.

A community is like the ones who govern it.

Oh, the times Oh, the morals O tempora O mores.

As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with an old man that has something of the youth. He that follows this rule may be old in body, but can never be so in mind.

No one was ever great without some portion of divine inspiration.

The eyes like sentinel occupy the highest place in the body.

Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends.

No sane man will dance.

There is pleasure in calm remembrance of a past sorrow.

Old age: the crown of life, our play's last act.

Advice is judged by results, not by intentions.

In nothing do men approach so nearly to the Gods, as in giving health to men.

When a government becomes powerful it is destructive, extravagant and violent it is an usurer which takes bread from innocent mouths and deprives honorable men of their substance, for votes with which to perpetuate itself

Orators are most vehement when their cause is weak.

The administration of government, like guardianship ought to be directed to the good of those who confer, not of those who receive the trust.

Take from a man his reputation for probity, and the more shrewd and clever he is, the more hated and mistrusted he becomes.

It is foolish to tear one's hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness.

Let arms yield to the toga, the laurel crown to praise.

There is no one so old as to not think they may live a day longer.

In everything, satiety closely follows the greatest pleasures.

Time destroys the speculation of men, but it confirms nature.