Marcus Tullius Cicero
It is foolish to pluck out one's hair for sorrow, as if grief could be assuaged by baldness.Collection: Grief
In a promise, what you thought, and not what you said, is always to be considered.Collection: Promise
Everyone has his besetting sin.Collection: Sin
We are born poets. we become orators.Collection: Poet
There is in superstition a senseless fear of God; religion consists in the pious worship of Him.Collection: Superstitions
There are some duties we owe even to those who have wronged us. There is, after all, a limit to retribution and punishment.Collection: Punishment
What we call pleasure, and rightly so is the absence of all pain.Collection: Pain
To freemen, threats are impotent.Collection: Freedom
I look upon the pleasure we take in a garden as one of the most innocent delights in human life.Collection: Garden
I know not any season of life that is past more agreeably than virtuous old age.Collection: Past
Never can custom conquer nature, for she is ever unconquered.Collection: Tradition
The greatest incitement to guilt is the hope of sinning with impunity.Collection: Guilt
The proof of a well-trained mind is that it rejoices in which is good and grieves at the opposite.Collection: Grieving
Old age, especially an honored old age, has so great authority, that this is of more value than all the pleasures of youth.Collection: Time
Nature has lent us life at interest, like money, and has fixed no day for its payment.Collection: Life
Exile is terrible to those who have, as it were, a circumscribed habitation; but not to those who look upon the whole globe but as one city.Collection: Cities
The foolishness of old age does not characterize all who are old, but only the foolish.Collection: Time
The chief recommendation is modesty, then dutiful conduct toward parents, then affection for kindred.Collection: Parent
No man in his senses will dance.Collection: Men
We make allowance for necessity.Collection: Allowance
For the laws are dumb in the midst of arms.Collection: Law
Always the same thing.Collection: Latin
It was fear that was then making you a good citizen, which is never a lasting teacher of duty.Collection: Teacher
Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul.Collection: Pay
Rather leave the crime of the guilty unpunished than condemn the innocent.Collection: Philosophical
Liberty consists in the power of doing that which is permitted by the law.Collection: Philosophical
Some men make a womanish complaint that it is a great misfortune to die before our time. I would ask what time? Is it that of Nature? But she, indeed, has lent us life, as we do a sum of money, only no certain day is fixed for payment. What reason then to complain if she demands it at pleasure, since it was on this condition that you received it.Collection: Death
Should this my firm persuasion of the soul's immortality prove to be a mere delusion, it is at least a pleasing delusion, and I will cherish it to my last breath.Collection: Time
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.Collection: Yield
True glory strikes root, and even extends itself; all false pretensions fall as do flowers, nor can any feigned thing be lasting.Collection: Flower
O philosophy, you leader of life.Collection: Leadership
Life is short, but art lives forever.Collection: Art
Ill gotten gains will be ill spent.Collection: Gains
A wise man does nothing by constraint.Collection: Wise
Softly! Softly! I want none but the judges to hear me. The Jews have already gotten me into a fine mess, as they have many other gentleman. I have no desire to furnish further grist for their mills.Collection: Judging
We cannot employ the mind to advantage when we are filled with excessive food and drink.Collection: Cooking
Come now: Do we really think that the gods are everywhere called by the same names by which they are addressed by us? But the gods have as many names as there are languages among humans. For it is not with the gods as with you: you are Velleius wherever you go, but Vulcan is not Vulcan in Italy and in Africa and in Spain.Collection: Thinking
Things perfected by nature are better than those finished by art.Collection: Art
As in the case of wines that improve with age, the oldest friendships ought to be the most delightful.Collection: Wine
What is dishonestly got vanishes in profligacy.Collection: Theft
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.Collection: Truth
One who sees the Supersoul accompanying the individual soul in all bodies and who understands that neither the soul nor the Supersoul is ever destroyed, actually sees.Collection: Soul
Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? In heaven's name,Catiline, how long will you abuse ourpatience?Collection: Patience
Virtue and decency are so nearly related that it is difficult to separate them from each other but in our imagination.Collection: Imagination
The whole of virtue consists in its practice.Collection: Practice