Top 500 Marcus Tullius Cicero Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “For one day spent well, and agreeably to your precepts, is preferable to an eternity of error.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

352. “They are, all of them, born with raging fanaticism in their hearts, just as the Bretons and the Germans are born with blond hair. I would not be in the least bit surprised if these people would not some day become deadly to the human race.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

353. “True glory takes root, and even spreads; all false pretences, like flowers, fall to the ground; nor can any counterfeit last long.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

354. “It is the nature of every person to error, but only the fool perseveres in error.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

355. “Advice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey’s end.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

356. “In the very books in which philosophers bid us scorn fame, they inscribe their names.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

357. “Though silence is not necessarily an admission, it is not a denial, either.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

358. “In the conduct of almost every affair slowness and procrastination are hateful.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

359. “Nothing is more disgraceful than insincerity.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

360. “He removes the greatest ornament of friendship who takes away from it respect.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

361. “You might as well take the sun out of the sky as friendship from life: for the immortal gods have given us nothing better or more delightful.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

362. “Just as the soul fills the body, so God fills the world. Just as the soul bears the body, so God endures the world. Just as the soul sees but is not seen, so God sees but is not seen. Just as the soul feeds the body, so God gives food to the world.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

363. “As the grace of man is in the mind, so the beauty of the mind is eloquence.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

364. “The nobler a man, the harder it is for him to suspect inferiority in others.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

365. “Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to continue always a child.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

366. “The mansion should not be graced by its master, the master should grace the mansion.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

367. “We are obliged to respect, defend and maintain the common bonds of union and fellowship that exist among all members of the human race.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

368. “No man can be brave who thinks pain the greatest evil; nor temperate, who considers pleasure the highest good.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

369. “The aim of a ship’s captain is a successful voyage; a doctor’s, health; a general’s, victory. So the aim of our ideal statesman is the citizens’ happy life – that is, a life secure in wealth, rich in resources, abundant in renown, and honorable in its moral character. That is the task which I wish him to accomplish – the greatest and best that any man can have.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

370. “Lay down this rule of friendship: neither ask nor consent to do what is wrong. The plea, ‘for friendship’s sake,’ is a discreditable one, and should not be admitted for a moment. We should ask from friends and do for friends only what is good.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

371. “Physicians, when the cause of disease is discovered, consider that the cure is discovered.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

372. “In a disordered mind, as in a disordered body, soundness of health is impossible.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

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

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

374. “A war is never undertaken by the ideal State, except in defense of its honor or its safety.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

375. “He does not seem to me to be a free man who does not sometimes do nothing.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

376. “There is no castle so strong that it cannot be overthrown by money.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

377. “Each part of life has its own pleasures. Each has its own abundant harvest, to be garnered in season. We may grow old in body, but we need never grow old in mind and spirit. No one is as old as to think he or she cannot live one more year.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

378. “When you are aspiring to the highest place, it is honorable to reach the second or even the third rank.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

379. “All pain is either severe or slight, if slight, it is easily endured; if severe, it will without doubt be brief.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

380. “A letter does not blush.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

381. “True nobility is exempt from fear.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

382. “No power is strong enough to be lasting if it labors under the weight of fear.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

383. “Virtue is a habit of the mind, consistent with nature and moderation and reason.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

384. “I prefer the wisdom of the uneducated to the folly of the loquacious.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

385. “No deceit is so veiled as that which lies concealed behind the semblance of courtesy.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

386. “To wonder at nothing when it happens, to consider nothing impossible before it has come to pass.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

387. “He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

388. “The cultivation of the mind is a kind of food supplied for the soul of man.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

389. “The celestial order and the beauty of the universe compel me to admit that there is some excellent and eternal Being, who deserves the respect and homage of men.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

390. “Men decide far more problems by hate, love, lust, rage, sorrow, joy, hope, fear, illusion or some other inward emotion, than by reality, authority, any legal standard, judicial precedent, or statute.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

391. “Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

392. “The well-known old remark of Cato, who used to wonder how two soothsayers could look one another in the face without laughing.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

393. “Of all nature’s gifts to the human race, what is sweeter to a man than his children?”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

394. “Because all the sick do not recover, therefore medicine is not an art.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

395. “Nor do I regret that I have lived, since I have so lived that I think I was not born in vain, and I quit life as if it were an inn, not a home.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

396. “He is an eloquent man who can treat humble subjects with delicacy, lofty things impressively, and moderate things temperately.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

397. “Plato divinely calls pleasure the bait of evil, inasmuch as men are caught by it as fish by a hook.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

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

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

399. “Death darkens his eyes, and unplumes his wings, Yet the sweetest song is the last he sings: Live so, my Love, that when death shall come, Swan-like and sweet it may waft thee home.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

400. “Let us not listen to those who think we ought to be angry with our enemies, and who believe this to be great and manly. Nothing is so praiseworthy, nothing so clearly shows a great and noble soul, as clemency and readiness to forgive.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero