Quotes from Cicero

I never admired another's fortune so much that I became dissatisfied with my own.

I shall always consider the best guesser the best prophet.

If you aspire to the highest place, it is no disgrace to stop at the second, or even the third, place.

Reason is the mistress and queen of all things.

There is something pleasurable in calm remembrance of a past sorrow.

Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable.

He used to raise a storm in a teapot.

There are more men ennobled by study than by nature.

Religion is not removed by removing superstition.

There is in superstition a senseless fear of God.

The authority of those who profess to teach is often a positive hindrance to those who desire to learn.

Oh, what times! Oh, what standards!

Honor is the reward of virtue.

Socrates, indeed, when he was asked of what country he called himself, said, "Of the world"; for he considered himself an inhabitant and a citizen of the whole world.

Nothing common can seem worthy of you.

As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with an old man that has something of the youth. He that follows this rule may be old in body, but can never be so in mind.

Gratitude is the mother of the virtues.

[I]s there anyone so foolish, even though he is young, as to feel absolutely sure that he will be alive when evening comes?

When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men's [children's] minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind.

The man who backbites an absent friend, nay, who does not stand up for him when another blames him, the man who angles for bursts of laughter and for the repute of a wit, who can invent what he never saw, who cannot keep a secret -- that man is black at heart: mark and avoid him.

Where is there dignity unless there is honesty?

What an ugly beast is the ape, and how like us.

It is our own evil thoughts which madden us.

Nature herself has imprinted on the minds of all the idea of God