Marcus Tullius Cicero Quotes

Friendship is infinitely better than kindness.

Guilt is present in the very hesitation, even though the deed be not committed.

Thou shouldst eat to live; not live to eat. [Lat., Esse oportet ut vivas, non vivere ut edas.]

The freedom of poetic license.

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

He removes the greatest ornament of friendship who takes away from it respect.

Not to be avaricious is money; not to be fond of buying is a revenue; but to be content with our own is the greatest and most certain wealth of all.

In our amusements a certain limit is to be placed that we may not devote ourselves to a life of pleasure and thence fall into immorality.

Our country is wherever we are well off. [Lat., Patria est, ubicunque est bene.]

The foundation of justice is good faith.

The causes of events are ever more interesting than the events themselves.

No well-informed person has declared a change of opinion to be inconstancy.

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

Justice renders to every one his due.

To-morrow will give some food for thought.

No sensible man ever imputes inconsistency to another for changing his minds.

They who dare to ask anything of a friend, by their very request seem to imply that they would do anything for the sake of that friend.

Every generous action loves the public view; yet no theatre for virtue is equal to a consciousness of it.

The best interpreter of the law is custom.

Taxes are the sinews of the state.

Excessive liberty leads both nations and individuals into excessive slavery. [Lat., Nimia libertas et populis et privatis in nimiam servitutem cadit.]

Every one is least known to himself, and it is very difficult for a man to know himself.

The aim of justice is to give everyone his due.

All things are full of God.

I am much beholden to old age, which has increased my eagerness for conversation in proportion as it has lessened my appetites of hunger and thirst.

Our character is not so much the product of race and heredity as of those circumstances by which nature forms our habits, by which we are nurtured and live.

A community is like the ones who govern it.

Fewer possess virtue, than those who wish us to believe that they possess it.

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?

Men decide far more problems by hate, love, lust, rage, sorrow, joy, hope, fear, illusion or some other inward emotion, than by reality, authority, any legal standard, judicial precedent, or statute.

The avarice of the old: it's absurd to increase one's luggage as one nears the journey's end.

In the conduct of almost every affair slowness and procrastination are hateful

I hope that the memory of our friendship will be everlasting.

Fortune, not wisdom, rules lives.

The happiest end of life is this: when the mind and the other senses being unimpaired, the same nature which put it together takes asunder her own work.

Virtue is a habit of the mind, consistent with nature and moderation and reason.

I speak of that learning which wakes us acquainted with the boundless extent of nature, and the universe, and which even while we remain in this world, discovers to us both heaven, earth, and sea.

Let flattery, the handmaid of the vices, be far removed (from friendship). [Lat., Assentatio, vitiorum adjutrix, procul amoveatur.]

We are all excited by the love of praise, and the noblest are most influenced by glory.

In extraordinary events ignorance of their causes produces astonishment.

A good orator is pointed and impassioned.

There were poets before Homer.

Not to be covetous, is money; not to be a purchaser, is a revenue.

The forehead is the gate of the mind.

Silent enim leges inter arma (Laws are silent in times of war).

Men in no way approach so nearly to the gods as in doing good to men. [Lat., Homines ad deos nulla re propius accedunt, quam salutem hominibus dando.]

Everything that thou reprovest in another, thou must most carefully avoid in thyself. [Lat., Omnia quae vindicaris in altero, tibi ipsi vehementer fugienda sunt.]

The greatest incitement to guilt is the hope of sinning with impunity.

For my own part, I had rather be old only a short time than be old before I really am so.

No grief is so acute but time ameliorates it.