Top 80 Sallust Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 2 of 2

51. “Neither soldiers nor money can defend a king but only friends won by good deeds, merit, and honesty.”

— Sallust

52. “No mortal man has ever served at the same time his passions and his best interests.”

— Sallust

53. “Distinguished ancestors shed a powerful light on their descendants, and forbid the concealment either of their merits or of their demerits.”

— Sallust

54. “But at power or wealth, for the sake of which wars, and all kinds of strife, arise among mankind, we do not aim; we desire only our liberty, which no honorable man relinquishes but with his life.”

— Sallust

55. “Of the bodies in the cosmos, some imitate mind and move in orbits; some imitate soul and move in a straight line, fire and air upward, earth and water downward.”

— Sallust

56. “The fame which is based on wealth or beauty is a frail and fleeting thing; but virtue shines for ages with undiminished lustre.”

— Sallust

57. “For men who had easily endured hardship, danger and difficult uncertainty, leisure and riches, though in some ways desirable, proved burdensome and a source of grief.”

— Sallust

58. “Most honorable are services rendered to the State; even if they do not go beyond words, they are not to be despised.”

— Sallust

59. “The higher your station, the less your liberty.”

— Sallust

60. “The soul is the captain and ruler of the life of morals.”

— Sallust

61. “We employ the mind to rule, the body to serve.”

— Sallust

62. “To have the same likes and dislikes, therein consists the firmest bond of friendship.”

— Sallust

63. “If fortune makes a wicked man prosperous and a good man poor, there is no need to wonder. For the wicked regard wealth as everything, the good as nothing. And the good fortune of the bad cannot take away their badness, while virtue alone will be enough for the good.”

— Sallust

64. “There were few who preferred honor to money.”

— Sallust

65. “It is always easy enough to take up arms, but very difficult to lay them down; the commencement and the termination of war are notnecessarily in the same hands; even a coward may begin, but the end comes only when the victors are willing.”

— Sallust

66. “Sovereignty is easily preserved by the very arts by which it was originally created. When, however, energy has given place to indifference, and temperance and justice to passion and arrogance, then as the morals change so changes fortune.”

— Sallust

67. “Neither the army nor the treasury, but friends, are the true supports of the throne; for friends cannot be collected by force of arms, nor purchased with money; they are the offspring of kindness and sincerity.”

— Sallust

68. “But many mortals, devoted to their stomachs and to sleep, have passed through life untaught and uncouth, like foreign travelers; and of course, contrary to nature, their bodies were a source of pleasure to them, their minds a burden. In the case of such people, I asses their life and death alike, since silence surrounds each. -p4.”

— Sallust

69. “By the wicked the good conduct of others is always dreaded.”

— Sallust

70. “One can ever assume to be what he is not, and to conceal what he is.”

— Sallust

71. “Of the cosmic Gods some make the world be, others animate it, others harmonize it, consisting as it does of different elements; the fourth class keep it when harmonized.”

— Sallust

72. “The firmest friendship is based on an identity of likes and dislikes.”

— Sallust

73. “It is sweet to surve one country by deeds, and it is not absurd to surve her by words.”

— Sallust

74. “That power of the Gods which orders for the good things which are not uniform, and which happen contrary to expectation, is commonly called Fortune, and it is for this reason that the Goddess is especially worshipped in public by cities; for every city consists of elements which are not uniform.”

— Sallust

75. “He remembered that envy is the concomitant of glory, and thus, the more renowned he became, the greater was his caution and circumspection.”

— Sallust

76. “He that will be angry for anything will be angry for nothing.”

— Sallust

77. “It is impossible that there should be so much providence in the last details, and none in the first principles. Then the arts of prophecy and of healing, which are part of the cosmos, come of the good providence of the Gods.”

— Sallust

78. “But the case has proved that to be true which Appius says in his songs, that each man is the maker of his own fate.”

— Sallust

79. “The fact that the stars predict high or low rank for the father of the person whose horoscope is taken, teaches that they do not always make things happen but sometimes only indicate things. For how could things which preceded the birth depend upon the birth?”

— Sallust

80. “In victory even the cowardly like to boast, while in adverse times even the brave are discredited.”

— Sallust

81. “The poorest of men are the most useful to those seeking power.”

— Sallust

82. “No man underestimates the wrongs he suffers; many take them more seriously than is right.”

— Sallust

83. “In my opinion, he only may be truly said to live and enjoy his being who is engaged in some laudable pursuit, and acquires a name by some illustrious action, or useful art.”

— Sallust

84. “In my own case, who have spent my whole life in the practice of virtue, right conduct from habitual has become natural.”

— Sallust