Top 120 Martial Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “I am a shell-fish just come from being saturated with the waters of the Lucrine lake, near Baiae; but now I luxuriously thrust for noble pickle.”

— Martial

52. “Every bird that upwards swings Bears the Cross upon its wings.”

— Martial

53. “It is feeling and force of imagination that make us eloquent.”

— Martial

54. “Joys do not stay, but take wing and fly away.”

— Martial

55. “Live thy life as it were spoil and pluck the joys that fly.”

— Martial

56. “Man loves malice, but not against one-eyed men nor the unfortunate, but against the fortunate and proud.”

— Martial

57. “However great the dish that holds the turbot, the turbot is still greater than the dish.”

— Martial

58. “A good man doubles the length of his existence; to have lived so as to look back with pleasure on our past existence is to live twice.”

— Martial

59. “Generosity during life is a very different thing from generosity in the hour of death; one proceeds from genuine liberality, and benevolence; the other from pride or fear, or from the fact that you cannot take your money with you to the other world.”

— Martial

60. “He writes nothing whose writings are not read.”

— Martial

61. “You importune me, Tucca, to present you with my books. I shall not do so; for you want to sell, not to read, them.”

— Martial

62. “Your seventh wife, Phileros, is now being buried in your field. No man’s field brings him greater profit than yours, Phileros.”

— Martial

63. “When your crowd of attendants so loudly applaud you, Pomponius, it is not you, but your banquet, that is eloquent.”

— Martial

64. “Laugh, if thou art wise.”

— Martial

65. “You complain, friend Swift, of the length of my epigrams, but you yourself write nothing. Yours are shorter.”

— Martial

66. “It is not, believe me, the act of a wise man to say, “I will live.” To-morrow’s life is too late; live to-day.”

— Martial

67. “You praise, in three hundred verses, Sabellus, the baths of Ponticus, who gives such excellent dinners. You wish to dine, Sabellus, not to bathe.”

— Martial

68. “It is easy in adversity to despise death; he has real fortitude who dares to live and be wretched.”

— Martial

69. “Gifts are like hooks.”

— Martial

70. “It is not he who forms idols in gold or marble that makes them gods, but he who kneels before them.”

— Martial

71. “All your female friends are either old or ugly; nay, more ugly than old women usually are. These you lead about in your train, and drag with you to feasts, porticos and theaters. Thus, Fabulla, you seem handsome, thus you seem young.”

— Martial

72. “The world is blessed most by men who do things, and not by those who merely talk about them. -James Oliver ‘Tomorrow I will live,’ the fool does say; tomorrow itself is late; the wise live yesterday.”

— Martial

73. “While you cannot resolve what you are, at last you will be nothing.”

— Martial

74. “You’ll get no laurel crown for outrunning a burrow.”

— Martial

75. “Spare the person but lash the vice.”

— Martial

76. “The shameless Chloe placed on the tombs of her seven husbands the inscription, “The work of Chloe.” How could she have expressed herself more plainly?”

— Martial

77. “Some are good, some are middling, the most are bad.”

— Martial

78. “You crystal break, for fear of breaking it: Careless and careful hands like faults commit.”

— Martial

79. “Neither fear your death’s day nor long for it.”

— Martial

80. “What’s a wretched man? A man whom no man pleases.”

— Martial

81. “I seem to you cruel and too much addicted to gluttony, when I beat my cook for sending up a bad dinner. If that appears to you too trifling a cause, say for what cause you would have a cook flogged.”

— Martial

82. “Wish to be what you are, and wish for no other position.”

— Martial

83. “Be satisfied, and pleased with what thou art, Act cheerfully and well thou allotted part; Enjoy the present hour, be thankful for the past, And neither fear, nor wish, the approaches of the last.”

— Martial

84. “He who weighs his burdens, can bear them.”

— Martial

85. “Your page stands against you and says to you that you are a thief.”

— Martial

86. “If my opinion is of any worth, the fieldfare is the greatest delicacy among birds, the hare among quadrupeds.”

— Martial

87. “You’re obstinate, pliant, merry, morose, all at once. For me there’s no living with you, or without you.”

— Martial

88. “The bee is enclosed, and shines preserved in amber, so that it seems enshrined in its own nectar.”

— Martial

89. “Whoever makes great presents, expects great presents in return.”

— Martial

90. “I have granted you much that you asked: and yet you never cease to ask of me. He who refuses nothing, Atticilla, will soon have nothing to refuse.”

— Martial

91. “Some good, some so-so, and lots plain bad: that’s how a book of poems is made, my Friend.”

— Martial

92. “It is folly to waste labour about trifles.”

— Martial

93. “Service cannot be expected from a friend in service; let him be a freeman who wishes to be my master.”

— Martial

94. “Work divided is in that manner shortened.”

— Martial

95. “Epigrams need no crier, but are content with their own tongue.”

— Martial

96. “Those they praise, but they read the others.”

— Martial

97. “Such are thou and I: but what I am thou canst not be; what thou art any one of the multitude may be.”

— Martial

98. “Glory comes too late when we are nought but ashes.”

— Martial

99. “Tis easy to write epigrams nicely, but to write a book is hard.”

— Martial

100. “I know all that better than my own name.”

— Martial