Quotes By Marcus Tullius Cicero

Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.

The precepts of the law are these: to live honestly, to injure no one, and to give everyone else his due.

Nothing is more unreliable than the populace, nothing more obscure than human intentions, nothing more deceptive than the whole electoral system.

Like associates with like.

The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.

Take from a man his reputation for probity, and the more shrewd and clever he is, the more hated and mistrusted he becomes.

Of all nature's gifts to the human race, what is sweeter to a man than his children?

People do not understand what a great revenue economy is.

Hatred is inveterate anger.

There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not already said it.

Nothing is so strongly fortified that it cannot be taken by money.

A tear dries quickly when it is shed for troubles of others.

Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself.

Nothing stands out so conspicuously, or remains so firmly fixed in the memory, as something which you have blundered.

The best interpreter of the law is custom.

Though silence is not necessarily an admission, it is not a denial, either.

The only excuse for war is that we may live in peace unharmed.

As fire when thrown into water is cooled down and put out, so also a false accusation when brought against a man of the purest and holiest character, boils over and is at once dissipated, and vanishes and threats of heaven and sea, himself standing unmoved.

Not cohabitation but consensus constitutes marriage.

We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names.

Before beginning, plan carefully.

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 soul feeds the body, so God gives food to the world.

Nothing is more noble, nothing more venerable than fidelity. Faithfulness and truth are the most sacred excellences and endowments of the human mind.

No poet or orator has ever existed who believed there was any better than himself.

The enemy is within the gates; it is with our own luxury, our own folly, our own criminality that we have to contend.

No obligation to do the impossible is binding.

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.

Justice is the set and constant purpose which gives every man his due.

The good of the people is the greatest law.

Frivolity is inborn, conceit acquired by education.