Top 500 Marcus Tullius Cicero Quotes (2024 Update)
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401. “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

402. “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

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

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

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

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

405. “The soul in sleep gives proof of its divine nature.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

406. “Morals today are corrupted by our worship of riches.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

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

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

408. “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

409. “Who doesn’t know that the first law of history is not to dare to say anything false, and the second is not to refrain from saying anything true?”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

410. “Every stage of human life, except the last, is marked out by certain and defined limits; old age alone has no precise and determinate boundary.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

411. “What an ugly beast the ape, and how like us.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

412. “Old age is by nature rather talkative.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

413. “The good life is impossible without a good state; and there is no greater blessing than a well-ordered state.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

414. “The gardener plants trees, not one berry of which he will ever see: and shall not a public man plant laws, institutions, government, in short, under the same conditions?”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

415. “Inhumanity is harmful in every age. – Inhumanitas omni aetate molesta est.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

416. “It is certain that memory contains not only philosophy, but all the arts and all that appertain to the use of life.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

417. “Orators are most vehement when their cause is weak.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

418. “Let art, then, imitate nature, find what she desires, and follow as she directs. For in invention nature is never last, education never first; rather the beginnings of things arise from natural talent, and ends are reached by discipline.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

419. “They who say that we should love our fellow-citizens but not foreigners, destroy the universal brotherhood of mankind, with which benevolence and justice would perish forever.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

420. “Nothing dries sooner than a tear.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

421. “By Hercules! I prefer to err with Plato, whom I know how much you value, than to be right in the company of such men.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

422. “Freedom is a man’s natural power of doing what he pleases, so far as he is not prevented by force or law.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

423. “Death is not natural for a state as it is for a human being, for whom death is not only necessary, but frequently even desirable.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

424. “Enmity is anger watching the opportunity for revenge.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

425. “Always the same thing.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

426. “Law stands mute in the midst of arms.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

427. “Persistence in a single view has never been regarded as a merit in political leaders.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

428. “We must not only obtain Wisdom: we must enjoy her.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

429. “Fortune is not only blind herself, but blinds the people she has embraced.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

430. “For there is but one essential justice which cements society, and one law which establishes this justice. This law is right reason, which is the true rule of all commandments and prohibitions. Whoever neglects this law, whether written or unwritten, is necessarily unjust and wicked.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

431. “It is a great thing to know your vices.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

432. “So near is falsehood to truth that a wise man would do well not to trust himself on the narrow edge.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

433. “Summer lasts not for ever; seasons succeed each other.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

434. “The leaders should all relate to this principle: the governed must be as happy as possible.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

435. “I hate all children of precocious talent.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

436. “The eyes like sentinel occupy the highest place in the body.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

437. “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.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

438. “To be endowed with strength by nature, to be actuated by the powers of the mind, and to have a certain spirit almost divine infused into you.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

439. “Were floods of tears to be unloosed In tribute to my grief, The doves of Noah ne’er had roost Nor found an olive-leaf.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

440. “The consciousness of good intention is the greatest solace of misfortunes.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

441. “It is not only arrogant, but it is profligate, for a man to disregard the world’s opinion of himself.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

442. “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.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

443. “All I can do is to urge on you to regard friendship as the greatest thing in the world; for there is nothing which so fits in with our nature, or is so exactly what we want in prosperity or adversity.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

444. “I look upon the pleasure we take in a garden as one of the most innocent delights in human life.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

445. “Let flattery, the handmaid of the vices, be far removed .”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

446. “The name of peace is sweet and the thing itself good, but between peace and slavery there is the greatest difference.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

447. “Great is our admiration of the orator who speaks with fluency and discretion.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

448. “Such are a well regulated militia, composed of the freeholders, citizen and husbandman, who take up arms to preserve their property, as individuals, and their rights as freemen.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

449. “Be sure that it is not you that is mortal, but only your body. For that man whom your outward form reveals is not yourself; the spirit is the true self, not that physical figure which and be pointed out by your finger.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

450. “Dogs wait for us faithfully.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero