Top 120 Martial Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Live thy life as it were spoil and pluck the joys that fly.”

— Martial

52. “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

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

— Martial

54. “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

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

60. “Laugh, if thou art wise.”

— 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. “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

63. “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

64. “Gifts are like hooks.”

— Martial

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

69. “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

70. “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

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

— Martial

72. “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

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

— Martial

74. “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

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

79. “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

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

88. “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

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

91. “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

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

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

— Martial

100. “A cook should double one sense have: for he Should taster for himself and master be.”

— Martial