Quotes from Virgil

Fear is proof of a degenerate mind.

O farmers, pray that your summers be wet and your winters clear.

O accurst craving for gold!

Naked in death upon an unknown shore.

Age steals away all things, even the mind.

Others, I take it, will work better with breathing bronze and draw living faces from marble; others will plead at law with greater eloquence, or measure the pathways of the sky, or forecast the rising stars. Be it your concern, Roman, to rule the nations under law (this is your proper skill) and establish the way of peace; to spare the conquered and put down the mighty from their seat.

I make no distinction between Trojan and Tyrian.

So vast was the struggle to found the Roman state.

There is but one safety to the vanquished—to hope not safety.

A sudden madness came down upon the unwary lover [Orpheus]—forgivable, surely, if Death knew how to forgive.

O thrice and four times blessed!

Not every soil can bear all things.

You have suffered worse things; God will put an end to these also.

We have made you [Priapus] of marble for the time being.

This last labor grant me, O Arethusa.

O fatherland, O Ilium home of the gods, O Troy walls famed in battle!

In strife who inquires whether stratagem or courage was used?

They succeed, because they think they can.

A god has brought us this peace.

There are two gates of Sleep. One is of horn, easy of passage for the shades of truth; the other, of gleaming white ivory, permits false dreams to ascend to the upper air.

A snake lurks in the grass.

We descend from Jove; in ancestral Jove Troy's sons rejoice.

Our foes will provide us with arms.

Thrice would I have thrown my arms about her neck, and thrice the ghost embraced fled from my grasp: like a fluttering breeze, like a fleeting dream.