Explore Quotes by Marcus Tullius Cicero

Let the punishment match the offense.

In nothing do humans approach so nearly to the gods as doing good to others.

Our generosity never should exceed our abilities.

The diligent farmer plants trees, of which he himself will never see the fruit.

Within the character of the citizen, lies the welfare of the nation.

Can there be greater foolishness than the respect you pay to people collectively when you despise them individually?

There are gems of thought that are ageless and eternal.

If you possess a library and a garden, you have everything you need. (translation from the French) Si vous possedez une bibliotheque et un jardin, vous avez tout ce qu'il vous faut.

Friends, though absent, are still present.

No tempest or conflagration, however great, is harder to quell than mob carried away by the novelty of power.

This excessive licence, which the anarchists think is the only true freedom, provides the stock, as it were, from which a tyrant grows.

To give and receive advice - the former with freedom, and yet without bitterness, the latter with patience and without irritation - is peculiarly appropriate to geniune friendship.

Nature herself makes the wise man rich.

The beauty of the world and the orderly arrangement of everything celestial makes us confess that there is an excellent and eternal nature, which ought to be worshiped and admired by all mankind.

Things perfected by nature are better than those finished by art.

Law is the highest reason implanted in Nature, which commands what ought to be done and forbids the opposite.

Nature has circumscribed the field of life within small dimensions, but has left the field of glory unmeasured.

Not in opinion but in nature is law founded.

I follow nature as the surest guide, and resign myself with implicit obedience to her sacred ordinances.

I cease not to advocate peace; even though unjust it is better than the most just war.

Enjoy the blessing of strength while you have it and do not bewail it when it is gone, unless, forsooth, you believe that youth must lament the loss of infancy, or early manhood the passing of youth. Life's race-course is fixed; Nature has only a single path and that path is run but once, and to each stage of existence has been allotted its own appropriate quality; so that the weakness of childhood, the impetuosity of youth, the seriousness of middle life, the maturity of old age.. each bears some of Nature's fruit, which must be garnered in its own season.