Top 120 Martial Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “When your crowd of attendants so loudly applaud you, Pomponius, it is not you, but your banquet, that is eloquent.”

— Martial

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

— Martial

53. “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

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

56. “Be content to be what you are, and prefer nothing to it, and do not fear or wish for your last day.”

— Martial

57. “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

58. “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

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

61. “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

62. “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

63. “Gifts are like hooks.”

— Martial

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

— Martial

65. “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

66. “You may envy every one, but no one envies you.”

— Martial

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

— Martial

68. “Laugh, if thou art wise.”

— Martial

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

— Martial

70. “If you want him to mourn, you had best leave him nothing.”

— Martial

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

74. “It is as good as second life to be able to look back upon our past life with pleasure.”

— Martial

75. “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

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

81. “I would not miss your face, your neck, your hands, your limbs, your bosom and certain other of your charms. Indeed, not to become boring by naming them all, I could do without you, Chloe, altogether.”

— Martial

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

— Martial

83. “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

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

— Martial

85. “You should not fear, nor yet should you wish for your last day.”

— Martial

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

89. “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

90. “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

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

97. “Our days pass by, and are scored against us.”

— Martial

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

100. “For wealth’s now given to none but to the rich.”

— Martial