Top 200 Virgil Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “Cease to think that the decrees of the gods can be changed by prayers.”

— Virgil

152. “Your descendants shall gather your fruits.”

— Virgil

153. “Impotent fury rages powerless and to no purpose.”

— Virgil

154. “Their rage supplies them with weapons.”

— Virgil

155. “Then, like ravening wolves in a black mist, when the belly’s lawless rage has driven them blindly forth, and their whelps at home await them with thirsty jaws, through swords, through foes we pass to certain death, and hold our way to the city’s heart; black night hovers around with sheltering shade.”

— Virgil

156. “Myself acquainted with misfortune, I learn to help the unfortunate.”

— Virgil

157. “These passions of soul, these conflicts so fierce, will cease, and be repressed by the casting of a little dust.”

— Virgil

158. “O tyrant love, to what do you not drive the hearts of men.”

— Virgil

159. “In his deepest heart there surge tremendous shame and madness mixed with sorrow and love whipped on by frenzy and a courage aware of its own worth.”

— Virgil

160. “Those gods on whom our power hitherto depended have forsaken their altars and their shrines and gone forth from us; the city which you would rescue is already ablaze; and it is for us to plunge amid the spears and die. Nothing can save the conquered but the knowledge that they cannot now be saved.”

— Virgil

161. “O you who have borne even heavier things, to these too, God will grant an end!”

— Virgil

162. “Yet here, this night, you might repose with me, On green leaves pillowed: apples ripe have I, Soft chestnuts, and of curdled milk enow. And, see, the farm-roof chimneys smoke afar, And from the hills the shadows lengthening fall!”

— Virgil

163. “Fury itself supplies arms.”

— Virgil

164. “If ye despise the human race, and mortal arms, yet remember that there is a God who is mindful of right and wrong.”

— Virgil

165. “Age steals away all things, even the mind.”

— Virgil

166. “The Britons are quite separated from all the world.”

— Virgil

167. “I too am a poet who has found some favour with the Muse. I too have written songs. I too have heard the shepherds call me bard. But I take it from them with a grain of salt: I have the feeling that I cannot yet compare with Varius or Cinna, but cackle like a goose among melodious swans.”

— Virgil

168. “Is there so much anger in the minds of the gods?”

— Virgil

169. “The wavering multitude is divided into opposite factions.”

— Virgil

170. “Meanwhile Aeneas the True longed to allay her grief and dispel her sufferings with kind words. yet he remained obedient to the divine command, and with many a sigh, for he was shaken to the depths by the strength of his love, returned to his ships.”

— Virgil

171. “The seeds of life – fiery is their force, divine their birth, but they are weighed down by the bodies’ ills or dulled by earthly limbs and flesh that’s born for death.”

— Virgil

172. “Each of us finds the world of death fitted to himself.”

— Virgil

173. “Not being untutored in suffering, I learn to pity those in affliction.”

— Virgil

174. “Do the gods light this fire in our hearts or does each man’s mad desire become his god?”

— Virgil

175. “Una salus uictis nullam sperare salutem.”

— Virgil

176. “Womankind Is ever a fickle and a changeful thing.”

— Virgil

177. “If one swain scorns you, you will soon find another.”

— Virgil

178. “Each man is led by his own liking.”

— Virgil

179. “Live, and prosper, for all your adventures are past. We are called onwards from destiny to destiny. For you, your rest is won.”

— Virgil

180. “No other evil we know is faster than Rumor, thriving on speed and becoming stronger by running. Small and timid at first, then borne on a light air, she flits over ground while hiding her head on a cloud-top.”

— Virgil

181. “Want of pluck shows want of blood.”

— Virgil

182. “There may be no great honour in killing a woman; such a victory can bring no fame. But I shall have some credit for having stamped dead a mortal sin, and punished a wrong which cries out for justice; and it will be joy to have gutted my desire for the vengeance of the fire and satisfied the ashes of all that were ever dear to me.”

— Virgil

183. “I am that poet who in times past made the light melody of pastoral poetry. In my next poem I left the woods for the adjacent farmlands, teaching them to obey even the most exacting tillers of the soil; and the farmers liked my work. But now I turn to the terrible strife of Mars.”

— Virgil

184. “Who asks whether the enemy was defeated by strategy or valor?”

— Virgil

185. “This is a tale of arms and of a man. Fated to be an exile, he was the first to sail from the land of Troy and reach Italy, at its Lavinian shore. He met many tribulations on his way both by land on on the ocean; high Heaven willed it, for Juno was ruthless and could not forget her anger.”

— Virgil

186. “Rumor starts as a timid thing, But soon it covers the earth, and its voices ring, While its feet walk the ground and its head is above the clouds.”

— Virgil

187. “His heart beat high for war and he blazed with an implacable fire which needed no kindling.”

— Virgil

188. “But the Danaan princes and Agamemnon’s battalions, soon as they saw the man and his arms flashing amid the glom, trembled with mighty fear; some turn to flee, as of old they sought the ships; some raise a shout – faintly; the cry essayed mocks their gaping mouths.”

— Virgil

189. “Let not our proposal be disregarded on the score of our youth.”

— Virgil

190. “The sky and the lands, the watery plains, the moon’s gleaming face, the Titanic Sun and the stars are all strengthened by Spirit working within them, and by Mind, which is blended into all the vast universe and pervades every part of it, enlivening the whole mass.”

— Virgil

191. “What a lot of work it was to found the Roman race.”

— Virgil

192. “Each draws to his best-loved.”

— Virgil

193. “From my example learn to be just, and not to despise the gods.”

— Virgil

194. “Dux femina facit.”

— Virgil

195. “Night reigned: all through the world tied bodies were harvesting tranquil slumber.”

— Virgil

196. “She prayed then to whatever power may care in comprehending justice for the grief of lovers bound unequally by love.”

— Virgil

197. “Mothers of Latium! Hey! Hear me, each one of you, wherever you may be! If you still have any sympathy for poor Amata in your faithful hearts, or any prick of conscience for a mother’s claims, untie the bands around your hair and take to the wild rites with me!”

— Virgil

198. “Each person, makes their own terrible passion their God.”

— Virgil

199. “Here is the toil of that house, and the inextricable wandering.”

— Virgil

200. “A joy it will be one day, perhaps, to remember even this.”

— Virgil