Marcus Tullius Cicero Quotes

“The rabble estimate few things according to their real value, most things according to their prejudices.”

“Old age, especially an honored old age, has so great authority, that this is of more value than all the pleasures of youth.”

“Hatred is a settled anger.”

“Few are those who wish to be endowed with virtue rather than to seem so.”

“Whatever is graceful is virtuous, and whatever is virtuous is graceful.”

“All I can do is to urge on you to regard friendship as the greatest thing in the world; for there is nothing which so fits in with our nature, or is so exactly what we want in prosperity or adversity.”

“Friends, though absent, are still present.”

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

“To give and receive advice - the former with freedom, and yet without bitterness, the latter with patience and without irritation - is peculiarly appropriate to geniune friendship.”

“He who acknowledges a kindness has it still, and he who has a grateful sense of it has requited it.”

“O wretched man, wretched not just because of what you are, but also because you do not know how wretched you are!”

“Nothing is so difficult to believe that oratory cannot make it acceptable, nothing so rough and uncultured as not to gain brilliance and refinement from eloquence.”

“A man does not wonder at what he sees frequently, even though he be ignorant of the reason. If anything happens which he has not seen before, he calls it a prodigy.”

“What society does to its children, so will its children do to society.”

“The searching-out and thorough investigation of truth ought to be the primary study of man.”

“Justice renders to every one his due.”

“Courage is virtue which champions the cause of right.”

“Little by little old age renders the body less powerful.”

“The law is silent during war.[Lat., Silent leges inter arma.]”

“He cannot be strict in judging, who does not wish others to be strict judges of himself.”

“No one has the right to be sorry for himself for a misfortune that strikes everyone.”

“What fervent love of herself would Virtue excite if she could be seen!”

“In all great arts, as in trees, it is the height that charms us; we care nothing for the roots or trunks, yet it could not be without the aid of these.”

“Though laughter is allowable, a horse-laugh is abominable.”

“Wars, therefore, are to be undertaken for this end, that we may live in peace, without being injured; but when we obtain the victory, we must preserve those enemies who behaved without cruelty or inhumanity during the war.”