Marcus Tullius Cicero Quotes

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

While there's life, there's hope.

The life given us, by nature is short; but the memory of a well-spent life is eternal.

It is foolish to tear one’s hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness.

What is morally wrong can never be advantageous, even when it enables you to make some gain that you believe to be to your advantage. The mere act of believing that some wrongful course of action constitutes an advantage is pernicious.

To study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one’s self to die.

Sed nescio quo modo nihil tam absurde dici potest quod non dicatur ab aliquo philosphorum. (There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it.)

O philosophy, life's guide! O searcher-out of virtue and expeller of vices! What could we and every age of men have been without thee? Thou hast produced cities; thou hast called men scattered about into the social enjoyment of life.

I criticize by creation, not by finding fault.

We must not only obtain Wisdom: we must enjoy her.

My dear Scipio and Laelius. Men, of course, who have no resources in themselves for securing a good and happy life find every age burdensome. But those who look for all happiness from within can never think anything bad which Nature makes inevitable.

When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men's [children's] minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind.

A room without books is like a body without a soul.

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

Here is a man whose life and actions the world has already condemned - yet whose enormous fortune...has already brought him acquittal!

Time obliterates the fictions of opinion and confirms the decisions of nature.

No power on earth, if it labours beneath the burden of fear, can possibly be strong enough to survive.

In times of war, the law falls silent.

Silent enim leges inter arma

Those wars are unjust which are undertaken without provocation. For only a war waged for revenge or defense can be just.

Nescire autem quid antequam natus sis acciderit, id est semper esse puerum. (To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.)