Let us not listen to those who think we ought to be angry with our enemies, and who believe this to be great and manly. Nothing is so praiseworthy, nothing so clearly shows a great and noble soul, as…
Author
Marcus Tullius Cicero
114 quotations
About Marcus Tullius Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, orator, and writer who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises of the Roman Republic that led to the establishment of the Roman Empire. The extensive writings of Cicero include treatises on rhetoric, philosophy, and politics. He is considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists and the innovator of what became known as "Ciceronian rhetoric". Cicero was educated in Rome and in Greece.…
Read on Wikipedia → Find books by Marcus Tullius CiceroIf you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away but the good remains if you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains.
The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.
Next to God we are nothing. To God we are Everything.
Just as the soul fills the body, so God fills the world. Just as the soul bears the body, so God endures the world. Just as the soul sees but is not seen, so God sees but is not seen. Just as the sou…
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.
Love is the attempt to form a friendship inspired by beauty.
What sweetness is left in life, if you take away friendship? Robbing life of friendship is like robbing the world of the sun. A true friend is more to be esteemed than kinsfolk.
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The rule of friendship means there should be mutual sympathy between them, each supplying what the other lacks and trying to benefit the other, always using friendly and sincere words.
Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.
A friend is, as it were, a second self.
Freedom is a possession of inestimable value.
What then is freedom? The power to live as one wishes.
Freedom is a man's natural power of doing what he pleases, so far as he is not prevented by force or law.
Just as the soul fills the body, so God fills the world. Just as the soul bears the body, so God endures the world. Just as the soul sees but is not seen, so God sees but is not seen. Just as the sou…
Cultivation to the mind is as necessary as food to the body.
Fear is not a lasting teacher of duty.
True nobility is exempt from fear.
A man of courage is also full of faith.
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
Frivolity is inborn, conceit acquired by education.
Natural ability without education has more often attained to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.
I add this, that rational ability without education has oftener raised man to glory and virtue, than education without natural ability.
Death is not natural for a state as it is for a human being, for whom death is not only necessary, but frequently even desirable.
To some extent I liken slavery to death.