Sourced and curated.

Cui bono?

Pro Milone · 52 BC

★ 8.0

Every instant of time is a pinprick of eternity.

Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a prime mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.

Meditations · 180

★ 7.9

Religious literature

St. Thomas Aquinas

1265

★ 7.8

Who benefits?

Lucius Cassius Longinus Ravilla

Cicero, Pro Milone · 80 BC

★ 7.7

Be like a headland of rock on which the waves break incessantly: but it stands fast and around it the seething of the waters sinks to rest.

Meditations · 180

★ 7.6

Only two things does he anxiously wish for-bread and circuses.

Satires · 127

★ 7.3

The traveler with nothing on him sings in the robber’s face.

Satires

★ 7.3

If a person knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.

★ 7.1

O happy race of mortals, if your hearts are ruled, as is the universe, by Love!

The Consolation of Philosophy · 523

★ 7.1

The people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions, and all else, now concerns itself no more, and longs eagerly for just two things-bread and circuses!

Satires · 127

★ 7.0

Carthage must be destroyed.

Cato the Elder

Plutarch, Plutarch's Lives · 149 BC

★ 6.3

Biography · Historical literature

The die is cast.

Julius Caesar

Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars · 49 BC

★ 5.7

Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.

I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble.

Meditations · 180

★ 5.6

Biography · Historical literature

Caesar Augustus

Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars · 121

★ 4.9

Laws are silent in time of war.

Historical literature · Autobiography and memoir

Pro Milone · 52 BC

★ 4.8

Men are nearly always willing to believe what they wish.

Julius Caesar

The Gallic Wars · 49 BC

★ 4.0

Historical literature · Autobiography and memoir

Gaul as a whole is divided into three parts.

Julius Caesar

The Gallic Wars · 49 BC

★ 4.0

For it is commonly said: completed labors are pleasant.

De Finibus · 45 BC

★ 4.0

What is not good for the swarm is not good for the bee.

Meditations · 180

★ 4.0

Mankind have been created for the sake of one another.

Meditations · 180

★ 4.0

Love the little trade which you have learned, and be content with it.

Meditations · 180

★ 4.0

O tempora! O mores!

Against Catiline · 63 BC

★ 3.9

While there's life, there's hope.

49 BC

★ 3.9

What is more agreeable than one's home?

46 BC

★ 3.9

There are more disorders of the mind than of the body, and they are of a more dangerous nature.

Tusculan Disputations · 45 BC

★ 3.9

Let the punishment match the offense.

On the Laws · 43 BC

★ 3.9

It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.

Those who aim at great deeds must also suffer greatly.

★ 3.9

Historical literature

Marcus Licinus Crassus

Plutarch, Plutarch's Lives · 119

★ 3.9

Travel light and you can sing in the robber's face.

Satires · 127

★ 3.9

How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.

Meditations · 180

★ 3.9

The longest-lived and the shortest-lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same things.

Meditations · 180

★ 3.9

’Tis very dishonourable in life, that the soul should fail and desert its duty; while the body can hold out, and sustain its part.

Meditations · 180

★ 3.9

Nowhere can a man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.

Meditations · 180

★ 3.9

We all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.

Meditations · 180

★ 3.9

Time is a violent torrent; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.

Meditations · 180

★ 3.9

As for life, it is a battle and a sojourning in a strange land; but the fame that comes after is oblivion.

Meditations · 180

★ 3.9

If you expect a physician to help you, you must lay bare your wound.

If all evil were prevented, much good would be absent from the universe. A lion would cease to live, if there were no slaying of animals; and there would be no patience of martyrs if there were no tyrannical persecution.

The Consolation of Philosophy · 523

★ 3.9

Religious literature

St. Thomas Aquinas

1265

★ 3.9

Biography · Historical literature

Let them hate, so long as they fear.

Caligula

Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars

★ 3.9

Dialogue · Political literature

For there is nothing that happens on earth that is more welcome to that supreme God who rules the whole universe than the institutions and congregations of men united by a sense of right, which are called states.

On the Commonwealth · 51 BC

★ 3.8

To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child.

46 BC

★ 3.8

For of all gainful professions, nothing is better, nothing more pleasing, nothing more delightful, nothing better becomes a well-bred man than agriculture.

Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men.

On Duties · 44 BC

★ 3.8

Essay

★ 3.8

The best ideas are common property.

★ 3.8

All art is but imitation of nature.

★ 3.8

A great pilot can sail even when his canvas is rent.

★ 3.8

I was shipwrecked before I got on board.

All wish to be learned, but no one is willing to pay the price.

★ 3.8

Poem · Satire

Satires · 100

★ 3.8

We are now suffering the evils of a long peace. Luxury, more deadly than war, broods over the city, and avenges a conquered world.

Satires · 127

★ 3.8

Count it the greatest sin to prefer mere existence to honor, and for the sake of life to lose the reasons for living.

Satires · 127

★ 3.8

Mark how fleeting and paltry is the estate of man-yesterday in embryo, tomorrow a mummy or ashes. So for the hairsbreadth of time assigned to thee, live rationally, and part with life cheerfully, as drops the ripe olive, extolling the season that bore it and the tree that matured it.

Meditations · 180

★ 3.8

Whatever befalls you was prepared for you beforehand from eternity, and the thread of causes was spinning from everlasting both your existence and this which befalls you.

Meditations · 180

★ 3.8

Think of the life you have lived until now as over and, as a dead man, see what’s left as a bonus and live it according to Nature. Love the hand that fate deals you and play it as your own, for what could be more fitting?

Meditations · 180

★ 3.8

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing, for it requires that we should stand ready and firm to meet onsets which are sudden and unexpected.

Meditations · 180

★ 3.8

All that is in harmony for you, my Universe, is in harmony with me as well. Nothing that comes at the right time for you is too early or too late for me. Everything is fruit to me that your seasons bring, Nature. All things come of you, have their being in you, and return to you.

Meditations · 180

★ 3.8

Nothing is miserable but what is thought so, and contrariwise, every estate is happy if he that bears it be content.

The Consolation of Philosophy · 523

★ 3.8

Wherefore not without cause has one of your own followers asked, "If God is, whence come evil things? If He is not, whence come good?"

The Consolation of Philosophy · 523

★ 3.8

Who hath so entire happiness that he is not in some part offended with the condition of his estate?

The Consolation of Philosophy · 524

★ 3.8

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.

★ 3.7

You can take comfort in the likelihood that what is now making you miserable will also pass away.

When a man sees his end, he wants to know there was some purpose to his life.

The Consolation of Philosophy · 523

★ 3.7

Film · Historical drama (film) · Drama (film) · Historical drama · Drama

It was divine nature which gave us the country, and man's skill that built the cities.

Gladiator · 2000

★ 3.7

Marcus Terentius Varro

27 BC

★ 3.6

We are mad, not only individually, but nationally. We check manslaughter and isolated murders; but what of war and the much vaunted crime of slaughtering whole peoples?

★ 3.6

Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man's power to live long.

★ 3.6

No person has the power to have everything they want, but it is in their power not to want what they don’t have, and to cheerfully put to good use what they do have.

Is the dwelling place of God anywhere but in the earth and sea, the air and sky, and virtue? Why seek we further for deities? Whatever you see, whatever you touch, that is Jupiter.

★ 3.6

Poem · Historical literature

Lucan

Pharsalia · 65

★ 3.5

Radio broadcast · Speech

Private property is a natural fruit of labor, a product of intense activity of man, acquired trough his energetic determination to ensure and develop with his own strength his own existence and that of his family, and to create for himself and his own an existence of just freedom, not only economic, but also political, cultural and religious.

Pope Pius XII

1944

★ 3.5

A friend is, as it were, a second self.

On Friendship · 44 BC

★ 2.3

It is man's peculiar duty to love even those who wrong him.

Meditations · 180

★ 2.3

If not becoming, don’t do it. If not true, don’t say it. Let these be your fixed principles.

Meditations · 180

★ 2.3

Nothing happens to anybody which he is not fitted by nature to bear.

Meditations · 180

★ 2.3

Uncomplicate yourself.

Whatever we do or suffer for a friend is pleasant, because love is the principal cause of pleasure.

Meditations · 180

★ 2.3

Religious literature

St. Thomas Aquinas

1265

★ 2.3

Speech

The thing which is the most outstanding and chiefly to be desired by all healthy and good and well-off persons, is leisure with honor.

Pro Sestio · 56 BC

★ 2.2

There were poets before Homer.

Philosophical dialogue · Philosophical literature

Brutus · 46 BC

★ 2.2

There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it.

On Divination · 44 BC

★ 2.2

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

On Old Age · 44 BC

★ 2.2

Life is long if you know how to use it.

On the Shortness of Life · 49

★ 2.2

No one ever suddenly became depraved.