The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.
TacitusRead
All bodies are slow in growth but rapid in decay.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the inevitability of aging and decline in physical bodies, suggesting the slow process of development contrasted with the swift nature of decline.
Tacitus's quote emphasizes the natural cycle of life, pointing out that while physical growth and development is a gradual process, the deterioration that follows occurs swiftly. This observation can serve as a reminder of the transience of life and the importance of cherishing youth and vitality while it lasts, encouraging reflection on the impermanence inherent to the human experience.
Themes
GrowthDecayLifeTransienceImpermanence
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of living in the moment.
More from Tacitus
All quotes βIn private enterprises men may advance or recede, whereas they who aim at empire have no alternative between the highest success and utter downfall.
TacitusRead
Great empires are not maintained by timidity.
TacitusRead
Things are not to be judged good or bad merely because the public think so.
TacitusRead
So obscure are the greatest events, as some take for granted any hearsay, whatever its source, others turn truth into falsehood, and both errors find encouragement with posterity.
TacitusRead
The brave and bold persist even against fortune; the timid and cowardly rush to despair though fear alone.
TacitusRead
Similar quotes
Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.
Honore De BalzacRead
It's all about time, dimwit time, inferior time, people checking watches and other devices, other reminders. This is time draining out of our lives. Cities were built to measure time, to remove time from nature. There's an endless counting down, he said. When you strip away surfaces, when you see into it, what's left is terror. This is the thing that literature was meant to cure. The epic poem, the bedtime story.
Don DelilloRead
People have to be atomized and segregated and alone. They're not supposed to organize, because then they might be something beyond spectators of action. They might actually be participants if many people with limited resources could get together to enter the political arena. That's really threatening.
Noam ChomskyRead
Wandering in a vast forest at night, I have only a faint light to guide me. A stranger appears and says to me: 'My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.' This stranger is a theologian.
Denis DiderotRead
It will always be the same possibilities, in sum or on the average, that go on repeating themselves until a man comes along who does not value the actuality above idea. It is he who first gives the new possibilities their meaning, their direction, and he awakens them.
Robert MusilRead
I knew that was really the only purpose of life: to be our self, live our truth, and be the love that we are.
Anita MoorjaniRead