quotes by Marcus Tullius Cicero
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"A room without books is like a body without a soul."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
"If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
tags:
books
794 people liked it
"To add a library to a house is to give that house a soul."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
"Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century:
Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others;
Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected;
Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it;
Refusing to set aside trivial preferences;
Neglecting development and refinement of the mind;
Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others;
Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected;
Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it;
Refusing to set aside trivial preferences;
Neglecting development and refinement of the mind;
Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
"Not to know what happened before you were born is to be forever a child"
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
"Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
"To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?"
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
"Read at every wait; read at all hours; read within leisure; read in times of labor; read as one goes in; read as one goest out. The task of the educated mind is simply put: read to lead."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
"Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief"
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
"Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
"Non nobis solum nati sumus. (Not for ourselves alone are we born.)"
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
tags:
self
16 people liked it
"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."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
tags:
truth
10 people liked it
"The life given us, by nature is short; but the memory of a well-spent life is eternal. "
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
"There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
tags:
philosophy
10 people liked it
"The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
"A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue, but the parent of all other virtues."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
"[T]o study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one’s self to die."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
"A mind without instruction can no more bear fruit than can a field, however fertile, without cultivation."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
"Our span of life is brief, but is long enough for us to live well and honestly."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
"God's law is "right reason". When perfectly understood it is called "wisdom". When applied by government in regulating human relations it is called "justice"."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
"Though silence is not necessarily an admission, it is not a denial, either. "
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
"He who knows only his own generation remains always a child."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
"As for myself, I can only exhort you to look on Friendship as the most valuable of all human possessions, no other being equally suited to the moral nature of man, or so applicable to every state and circumstance, whether of prosperity or adversity, in which he can possibly be placed. But at the same time I lay it down as a fundamental axiom that "true Friendship can only subsist between those who are animated by the strictest principles of honour and virtue." When I say this, I would not be thought to adopt the sentiments of those speculative moralists who pretend that no man can justly be deemed virtuous who is not arrived at that state of absolute perfection which constitutes, according to their ideas, the character of genuine wisdom. This opinion may appear true, perhaps, in theory, but is altogether inapplicable to any useful purpose of society, as it supposes a degree of virtue to which no mortal was ever capable of rising."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
"Though silence is not necessarily an admission, it is not a denial, either. "
— Marcus Tullius Cicero (On Obligations: De Officiis)
— Marcus Tullius Cicero (On Obligations: De Officiis)
"True law is right reason in agreement with nature;...it summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrongdoing by its prohibitions...It is a sin to try to alter this law, nor is it allowable to repeal any part of it, and it is impossible to abolish it entirely."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
"Mea mihi conscientia pluris est quam omnium sermo"
— Marcus Tullius Cicero (Letters to Atticus: Bks.I-VI v. 1)
— Marcus Tullius Cicero (Letters to Atticus: Bks.I-VI v. 1)
"Nescire autem quid antequam natus sis acciderit, id est semper esse puerum"
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
"Wohl niemand tanzt, wenn er nüchtern ist, er müsste denn den Verstand verloren haben."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
tags:
dancing
1 person liked it
"Lucius Cassius ille quem populus Romanus verissimum et sapientissimum iudicem putabat identidem in causis quaerere solebat 'cui bono' fuisset."
"The famous Lucius Cassius, whom the Roman people used to regard as a very honest and wise judge, was in the habit of asking, time and again, "To whose benefit?"
"
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
"The famous Lucius Cassius, whom the Roman people used to regard as a very honest and wise judge, was in the habit of asking, time and again, "To whose benefit?"
"
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
"'If you would abolish covetousness, you must abolish its mother, profusion."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
"Let arms give place to the robe, and the laurel of the warriors yield to the tongue of the orator."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero's profile »
all quotes
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The "Harry Potter" series by J.K. Rowling features a Professor of Divination. Divination, the study of signs from the gods to predict the future, was a crucial feature of Greek and Roman life. Which one of these Roman authors wrote a work, De Divinatione ("On Divination"), in which the characters debate the pros and cons of this practice?
a. Boethius
b. Cicero
c. Lucretius
d. Seneca
More trivia...
a. Boethius
b. Cicero
c. Lucretius
d. Seneca
More trivia...

