Quotes from Marcus Tullius Cicero

We must not say every mistake is a foolish one.

It is foolish to tear one's hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness.

It is a great thing to know your vices.

I hear Socrates saying that the best seasoning for food is hunger; for drink, thirst.

Let the punishment match the offense.

Freedom suppressed and again regained bites with keener fangs than freedom never endangered.

The recovery of freedom is so splendid a thing that we must not shun even death when seeking to recover it.

It is as hard for the good to suspect evil, as it is for the bad to suspect good.

To freemen, threats are impotent.

Freedom is a possession of inestimable value.

Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.

Friends, though absent, are still present.

In friendship we find nothing false or insincere; everything is straight forward, and springs from the heart.

It is not easy to distinguish between true and false affection, unless there occur one of those crises in which, as gold is tried by fire, so a faithful friendship may be tested by danger.

He takes the greatest ornament from friendship, who takes modesty from it. [Lat., Maximum ornamentum amicitiae tollit, qui ex ea tollit verecudiam.]

It is virtue, virtue, which both creates and preserves friendship. On it depends harmony of interest, permanence, fidelity.

It is a common saying that many pecks of salt must be eaten before the duties of friendship can be discharged.

Friendship makes prosperity brighter, while it lightens adversity by sharing its griefs and anxieties. [Lat., Secundas res splendidiores facit amicitia, et adversas partiens communicansque leviores.]

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.

To give counsel, as well as to take it, is a feature of true friendship.

Fire and water are not of more universal use than friendship.

Friendship is the only point in human affairs concerning the benefit of which all, with one voice, agree.

It is virtue itself that produces and sustains friendship, not without virtue can friendship by any possibility exist.

Crimes are not to be measured by the issue of events, but by the bad intentions of men.