The Sixteen Satires Quotes

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? - Who will watch the watchers?”
― Juvenal, The Sixteen Satires

“Never does Nature say one thing and Wisdom another.”
― Juvenal, The Sixteen Satires

“Many commit the same crime with a very different result. One bears a cross for his crime; another a crown.”
― Juvenal, The Satires

“It is to be prayed that the mind be sound in a sound body.
Ask for a brave soul that lacks the fear of death,
which places the length of life last among nature’s blessings,
which is able to bear whatever kind of sufferings,
does not know anger, lusts for nothing and believes
the hardships and savage labors of Hercules better than
the satisfactions, feasts, and feather bed of an Eastern king.
I will reveal what you are able to give yourself;
For certain, the one footpath of a tranquil life lies through virtue.”
― Juvenal, The Sixteen Satires

“It is a poor thing to lean upon the fame of others, lest the pillars give way and the house fall down in ruin.”
― Juvenal, The Sixteen Satires

“Is it a simple form of madness to lose a hundred thousand sesterces, and not have a shirt to give to a shivering slave?”
― Juvenal, The Sixteen Satires

“So Nature ordains; no evil example corrupts us so soon and so rapidly as one that has been set at home, since it comes into the mind on high authority.”
― Juvenal, The Sixteen Satires

“For no deity is held in such reverence amongst us as Wealth; though as yet, O baneful money, thou hast no temple of thine own; not yet have we reared altars to Money in like manner as we worship Peace and Honour, Victory and Virtue”
― Juvenal, The Sixteen Satires

“Benign Philosophy, by degrees, strips from us most of our vices, and all our mistakes; it is she that first teaches us the right.”
― Juvenal, The Sixteen Satires

“Had we but wisdom, thou wouldst have no Divinity, O Fortune: it is we that make thee into a Goddess!”
― Juvenal, The Sixteen Satires

“Many a man has met death from the rushing flood of his own eloquence; others from the strength and wondrous thews in which they have trusted.”
― Juvenal, The Sixteen Satires

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Who watches the watchmen themselves?”
― Juvenal, Satire

“show me the apartment 235 that lets you sleep! In this city sleep costs millions, and that’s the root of the trouble.”
― Juvenal, The Sixteen Satires

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Who will guard the guards?”
― Juvenal, The Satires

“count it the greatest of all sins to prefer life to honour, and to lose, for the sake of living, all that makes life worth having.”
― Juvenal, The Sixteen Satires

“there is nothing that divine Majesty will not believe concerning itself when lauded to the skies!”
― Juvenal, The Sixteen Satires

“Qus custodiet ipsos custodes”
― Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis, Des Decimus Junius Juvenalis Satiren

“Duas tantum res anxius optat, Panem et circenses, by the Roman satirist Juvenal.”
― Juvenal, The Sixteen Satires

“odi hanc ego quae repetit uoluitque Palaemonis artem seruata semper lege et ratione loquendi ignotosque mihi tenet antiquaria uersus nec curanda uiris.”
― Juvenal, The Sixteen Satires

“But just where will men draw the limit, after they see a high-born lawyer dress in transparent chiffon, to public amazement, to prosecute loose-living women? If they’re whores, bring in a guilty verdict: yet even a proven whore wouldn’t dare to rig herself out like that.”
― Juvenal, The Sixteen Satires

“However faster we pedestrians may hurry, crowds surge ahead, those behind us buffet my rib-cage, poles poke into me; one lout swings a crossbeam down on my skull, another scores with a barrel. My legs are mud-encrusted, from all sides big feet kick me, a hobnailed soldier’s boot lands squarely on my toes.”
― Juvenal, The Sixteen Satires

“Marry a wife, and she’ll make some smart guitarist or flute-player a father, not you.”
― Juvenal, The Sixteen Satires

“Poor Codrus had nothing, it is true: but he lost that nothing, which was his all”
― Juvenal, The Sixteen Satires

“You should pray for a healthy mind in a healthy body.
Ask for a stout heart that has no fear of death,
and deems length of days the least of Nature's gifts
that can endure any kind of toil,
that knows neither wrath nor desire and thinks
the woes and hard labors of Hercules better than
the loves and banquets and downy cushions of Sardanapalus.
What I commend to you, you can give to yourself;
For assuredly, the only road to a life of peace is virtue.”
― Juvenal, The Satires of Juvenal

“Who could identify fragments 260 of ownerless flesh and bone? The poor man’s flattened carcase would vanish along with his soul.”
― Juvenal, The Sixteen Satires

“What’s infamy matter if you keep your fortune?”
― Juvenal, The Sixteen Satires

“Denn selten sind die Guten; zähle sie, es sind kaum so viele
wie die Tore Thebens oder die Mündungsarme des reichen Nil.”
― Juvenal, The Sixteen Satires

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”
― Juvenal, The Sixteen Satires

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Who supervises the supervisors themselves?”
― Juvenal, Satire