Marcus Tullius Cicero > Quotes

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”
― 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

“To add a library to a house is to give that house a soul.”
― 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

“Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Nescire autem quid antequam natus sis acciderit, id est semper esse puerum. (Not to know what happened before you were born is to be forever a child.)”
― 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

“Dum Spiro, spero- As long as I breathe, I hope.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Laws are silent in times of war.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Non nobis solum nati sumus. (Not for ourselves alone are we born.)”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“If we are not ashamed to think it, we should not be ashamed to say it.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“The life of the dead is set in the memory of the living.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero, Cicero: Philippics: v. 15

“The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“The life given us, by nature is short; but the memory of a well-spent life is eternal. ”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“For books are more than books, they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“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

“Politicians are not born; they are excreted.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Life is nothing without friendship.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“It is a great thing to know your vices.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue, but the parent of all other virtues.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“To study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one’s self to die.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“The shifts of fortune test the reliability of friends.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“We must not say every mistake is a foolish one.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“What an ugly beast is the ape, and how like us.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“While there's life, there's hope.”
― 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

“Our span of life is brief, but is long enough for us to live well and honestly.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“A happy life consists in tranquility of mind.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“The man who backbites an absent friend, nay, who does not stand up for him when another blames him, the man who angles for bursts of laughter and for the repute of a wit, who can invent what he never saw, who cannot keep a secret -- that man is black at heart: mark and avoid him.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“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.)”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Divinatione

“Freedom is participation in power.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Though silence is not necessarily an admission, it is not a denial, either.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“A man of courage is also full of faith. ”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“a friend is a second self”
― 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

“Where is there dignity unless there is honesty?”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“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.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“What one has, one ought to use; and whatever he does, he should do with all his might.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“I criticize by creation, not by finding fault.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Live as brave men; and if fortune is adverse, front its blows with brave hearts”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“If a man cannot feel the power of God when he looks upon the stars, then I doubt whether he is capable of any feeling at all.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“It is foolish to tear one’s hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“A mind without instruction can no more bear fruit than can a field, however fertile, without cultivation.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Nothing stands out so conspicuously, or remains so firmly fixed in the memory, as something which you have blundered.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Never injure a friend, even in jest.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Ability without honor is useless.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero