mono
12-25-2004, 12:50 AM
Hello, everyone. After compiling many quotes, as you see, from Cicero's own works as a Roman philosopher, orator, and politician, I found many also from French thinker and historian, Michel de Montaigne, who quoted Cicero, among others, often. More quotes, one may find here: http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Cicero. Enjoy.
As folly, though it has gotten what it wanted, yet never thinks it has obtained enough, so wisdom is always content with the present and never displeased with itself.
There is no use in knowing what is to be; for it is wretched to be tormented to no purpose.
These things are thus reciprocal, so that if there is divination, there are gods, and if there are gods, there is divination.
For who is there who, shooting all day, will not sometime his the mark?
For people are happy not in hilarity or sensuality or laughter, nor in games, the comrades of levity, but often even in sadness through firmness and constancy.
Remember that death ends the greatest ills, that the small ones have many intervals of respite, and that we are masters of the moderate ones; so that if they are bearable we shall bear them; if not, we can leave life as we leave a theater when the play ceases to please us.
Never could custom conquer nature, for it is invincible; but we have corrupted our soul with shaded ease, luxuries, idleness, languor, sloth; we have softened it by evil opinions and habits.
Grief lies not in nature, but in opinion.
Not to be covetous is money, not to be avid to buy is revenue. The fruit of riches is abundance, and sufficiency declares abundance.
There is a certain weak and effeminate attitude shown in pleasure as much as in pain, whereby, when softness has reduced us to a liquid flow, we cannot endure a bee sting without crying out. The whole thing is to be master of yourself.
We have no solid and exact image of true law and genuine justice; we use the shadow and reflections of it.
If we could view that expanse of countries and ages, boundless in every direction, into which the mind, plunging and spreading itself, travels so far and wide that it can find no limit where it can stop, there would appear in that immensity an infinite capacity to produce innumerable forms.
The fruits of genius, virtue, and all excellence are most rewarding when they benefit some neighbor.
Servitude is the obedience of a broken and abject mind, lacking free will.
To me indeed all things seem more praiseworthy which are done without ostentation and without public witness.
The whole life of a philosopher is a meditation on death.
It matters a great deal in what sort of body the soul is lodged; for there are many things about the body that sharpen the mind, many that blunt it.
Nothing is more discreditable than to have assertion and proof precede knowledge and perception.
The force of habit is great. Hunters spend the night in the snow; they endure the burning sun in the mountains. Boxers bruised by the cestuses do not even groan.
The natural philosopher, who should be the observer and quester of nature, brazenly seeks the proof of truth from minds imbued with habit.
For we must not only acquire wisdom, but profit by it.
The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn.
Work hardens one against pain.
Nor is he forced by any necessity to defend everything that has been prescribed and commanded.
Who makes his learning not a display of knowledge, but the law of his life; who obeys himself and submits to his own injunctions.
As the scale of the balance must necessarily sink under the weight placed upon it, so must the mind yield to evident things.
The mind becomes accustomed to things by the habitual sight of them, and neither wonder nor inquires about the reasons for the things it sees all the time.
Love is the attempt to form a friendship inspired by beauty.
Only those are to be judged friendships in which the characters have been strengthened and matured by age.
There are men who praise nothing except what they are confident they can imitate.
Let true ideals be kept before your mind.
For nothing can be uniform that does not spring from a firm principle.
Fortune, I have anticipated you and seized you; I have cut off all your access, so that you cannot come near me.
As with wine for sick men, since it is rarely good and often bad, it is better not to use it at all, than in the hope of a doubtful benefit to incur a manifest risk; so I hardly know whether it would not have been better for the human race if this swift movement of thought, this acumen, this cleverness, which we call reason, had not been given to man at all, since it is a plague to many and salutary only to a few, rather than given so abundantly and so lavishly.
We rightly glory in virtue; which would not happen if we had it as a gift from God, not from ourselves.
Insensibility does not come without a great price: inhumanity of the soul, torpor of the body.
There is a conception, a prejudice in our minds such that when a man thinks of God, a human form occurs to him.
One thing cannot be more or less understood than another, because there is only one definition of comprehension for everything.
As we think of the calm of the sea, when not the slightest breath of air stirs the waves; so we find a quiet and peaceful state of the soul, when there is no emotion that can move her.
Again it often happens that our mind is struck more vehemently by some sight, some depth of voice, some songs; often again by care and fear.
True and wise greatness of soul judges goodness, which our nature mainly seeks, to lie in deeds, not in fame.
Can anything be more foolish than to think that those whom we despise individually amount to something collectively?
My opinion is this, that though a thing is not shameful in itself, still it is not free from shame when it is praised by the multitude.
The fruit of a service is the service itself.
In common parlance only that is called honorable which is glorious in popular opinion.
The more artful and cunning a man is, the more he is hated and suspected when he loses his reputation for honesty.
It is certain that the memory is the only receptacle, not only of philosophy, but of all that concerns the conduct of life, and of all the arts.
As folly, though it has gotten what it wanted, yet never thinks it has obtained enough, so wisdom is always content with the present and never displeased with itself.
There is no use in knowing what is to be; for it is wretched to be tormented to no purpose.
These things are thus reciprocal, so that if there is divination, there are gods, and if there are gods, there is divination.
For who is there who, shooting all day, will not sometime his the mark?
For people are happy not in hilarity or sensuality or laughter, nor in games, the comrades of levity, but often even in sadness through firmness and constancy.
Remember that death ends the greatest ills, that the small ones have many intervals of respite, and that we are masters of the moderate ones; so that if they are bearable we shall bear them; if not, we can leave life as we leave a theater when the play ceases to please us.
Never could custom conquer nature, for it is invincible; but we have corrupted our soul with shaded ease, luxuries, idleness, languor, sloth; we have softened it by evil opinions and habits.
Grief lies not in nature, but in opinion.
Not to be covetous is money, not to be avid to buy is revenue. The fruit of riches is abundance, and sufficiency declares abundance.
There is a certain weak and effeminate attitude shown in pleasure as much as in pain, whereby, when softness has reduced us to a liquid flow, we cannot endure a bee sting without crying out. The whole thing is to be master of yourself.
We have no solid and exact image of true law and genuine justice; we use the shadow and reflections of it.
If we could view that expanse of countries and ages, boundless in every direction, into which the mind, plunging and spreading itself, travels so far and wide that it can find no limit where it can stop, there would appear in that immensity an infinite capacity to produce innumerable forms.
The fruits of genius, virtue, and all excellence are most rewarding when they benefit some neighbor.
Servitude is the obedience of a broken and abject mind, lacking free will.
To me indeed all things seem more praiseworthy which are done without ostentation and without public witness.
The whole life of a philosopher is a meditation on death.
It matters a great deal in what sort of body the soul is lodged; for there are many things about the body that sharpen the mind, many that blunt it.
Nothing is more discreditable than to have assertion and proof precede knowledge and perception.
The force of habit is great. Hunters spend the night in the snow; they endure the burning sun in the mountains. Boxers bruised by the cestuses do not even groan.
The natural philosopher, who should be the observer and quester of nature, brazenly seeks the proof of truth from minds imbued with habit.
For we must not only acquire wisdom, but profit by it.
The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn.
Work hardens one against pain.
Nor is he forced by any necessity to defend everything that has been prescribed and commanded.
Who makes his learning not a display of knowledge, but the law of his life; who obeys himself and submits to his own injunctions.
As the scale of the balance must necessarily sink under the weight placed upon it, so must the mind yield to evident things.
The mind becomes accustomed to things by the habitual sight of them, and neither wonder nor inquires about the reasons for the things it sees all the time.
Love is the attempt to form a friendship inspired by beauty.
Only those are to be judged friendships in which the characters have been strengthened and matured by age.
There are men who praise nothing except what they are confident they can imitate.
Let true ideals be kept before your mind.
For nothing can be uniform that does not spring from a firm principle.
Fortune, I have anticipated you and seized you; I have cut off all your access, so that you cannot come near me.
As with wine for sick men, since it is rarely good and often bad, it is better not to use it at all, than in the hope of a doubtful benefit to incur a manifest risk; so I hardly know whether it would not have been better for the human race if this swift movement of thought, this acumen, this cleverness, which we call reason, had not been given to man at all, since it is a plague to many and salutary only to a few, rather than given so abundantly and so lavishly.
We rightly glory in virtue; which would not happen if we had it as a gift from God, not from ourselves.
Insensibility does not come without a great price: inhumanity of the soul, torpor of the body.
There is a conception, a prejudice in our minds such that when a man thinks of God, a human form occurs to him.
One thing cannot be more or less understood than another, because there is only one definition of comprehension for everything.
As we think of the calm of the sea, when not the slightest breath of air stirs the waves; so we find a quiet and peaceful state of the soul, when there is no emotion that can move her.
Again it often happens that our mind is struck more vehemently by some sight, some depth of voice, some songs; often again by care and fear.
True and wise greatness of soul judges goodness, which our nature mainly seeks, to lie in deeds, not in fame.
Can anything be more foolish than to think that those whom we despise individually amount to something collectively?
My opinion is this, that though a thing is not shameful in itself, still it is not free from shame when it is praised by the multitude.
The fruit of a service is the service itself.
In common parlance only that is called honorable which is glorious in popular opinion.
The more artful and cunning a man is, the more he is hated and suspected when he loses his reputation for honesty.
It is certain that the memory is the only receptacle, not only of philosophy, but of all that concerns the conduct of life, and of all the arts.