Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Wisdom is not only to be acquired, but enjoyed.”

“The great theatre for virtue is conscience.”

“When confronted by a hungry wolf, it is unwise to goad the beast, as Cato would have us do. But it is equally unwise to imagine the snarling animal a friend and offer your hand, as Pompey does." "Perhaps you would have us climb a tree!”

“The office of liberality consisteth in giving with judgment.”

“I depart from life as from an inn, and not as from my home.[Lat., Ex vita discedo, tanquam ex hospitio, non tanquam ex domo.]”

“The higher we are placed, the more humbly we should walk.”

“In everything truth surpasses the imitation and copy.”

“Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.”

“There is not a moment without some duty.”

“Your enemies can kill you, but only your friends can hurt you.”

“I know not any season of life that is past more agreeably than virtuous old age.”

“Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.”

“No sensible man (among the many things that have been written on this kind) ever imputed inconsistency to another for changing his mind.[Lat., Nemo doctus unquam (multa autem de hoc genere scripta sunt) mutationem consili inconstantiam dixit esse.]”

“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.”

“We must not say that every mistake is a foolish one.”

“To live is to think.”

“Even the ablest pilots are willing to receive advice from passengers in tempestuous weather.”

“Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.”

“Men, in whatever anxiety they may be, if they are men, sometimes indulge in relaxation.”

“Natural ability without education has more often attained to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.”

“It is foolish to pluck out one's hair for sorrow, as if grief could be assuaged by baldness.”

“He who hangs on the errors of the ignorant multitude, must not be counted among great men.”

“To stumble twice against the same stone, is a proverbial disgrace.[Lat., Culpa enim illa, bis ad eundem, vulgari reprehensa proverbio est.]”

“Taxes are the sinews of the state.”

“Mathematics is an obscure field, an abstruse science, complicated and exact; yet so many have attained perfection in it that we might conclude almost anyone who seriously applied himself would achieve a measure of success.”

“It is not enough to acquire wisdom, it is necessary to employ it.”

“Through ignorance of what is good and what is bad, the life of men is greatly perplexed.”

“Secret enmities are more to be feared than open ones.”

“There are two ways to resolve conflicts, through violence or through negotiation. Violence is for wild beasts, negotiation is for human beings.”

“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.”

“Great is the power, great is the authority of a senate that is unanimous in its opinions.”

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

“I am not ashamed to confess that I am ignorant of what I do not know.”

“That which leads us to the performance of duty by offering pleasure as its reward, is not virtue, but a deceptive copy and imitation of virtue.[Lat., Nam quae voluptate, quasi mercede aliqua, ad officium impellitur, ea non est virtus sed fallax imitatio simulatioque virtutis.]”

“The roots of knowledge are bitter, but its fruit are sweet.”

“To know the laws is not to memorize their letter but to grasp their full force and meaning.”

“Please go on, make your threats. I don't like to submit to mere implication.”

“Nature ordains that a man should wish the good of every man, whoever he may be, for this very reason that he is a man.”

“What is dishonorably got, is dishonorably squandered.”

“Orators are most vehement when their cause is weak.”

“Modesty is that feeling by which honorable shame acquires a valuable and lasting authority.”

“Crimes are not to be measured by the issue of events, but by the bad intentions of men.”

“The popular breeze - Aura popularis”

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”

“Thus 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.”

“The diseases of the mind are more and more destructive than those of the body.[Lat., Morbi perniciores pluresque animi quam corporis.]”

“There is pleasure in calm remembrance of a past sorrow.”

“The whole life of a philosopher is the meditation of his death.”

“An acute first-class brain is the finest asset anyone can have- and, if we want to be happy, it is an asset we must exploit to the uttermost.”

“It is the character of a brave and resolute man not to be ruffled by adversity and not to desert his post.”