Marcus Tullius Cicero Life Quotations

Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.

Brevity is the best recommendation of speech, whether in a senator or an orator.

A man of courage is also full of faith.

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.

Old age: the crown of life, our play's last act.

The higher we are placed, the more humbly we should walk.

The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.

We should not be so taken up in the search for truth, as to neglect the needful duties of active life; for it is only action that gives a true value and commendation to virtue.

The greater the difficulty, the greater the glory.

An unjust peace is better than a just war.

You will be as much value to others as you have been to yourself.

The nobler a man, the harder it is for him to suspect inferiority in others.

In everything, satiety closely follows the greatest pleasures.

Old age has been charged with being insensible to pleasure and to enjoyments arising from the gratification of the senses, a most blessed and heavenly effect, truly, if it eases us of what in youth was the sorest plague of life

We think a happy life consists in tranquility of mind.

We think a happy life consists in tranquillity of mind.

To the sick, while there is life there is hope.

To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child. For what is man's lifetime unless the memory of past events is woven with those of earlier times?

The life given us by nature is short, but the memory of a life well spent is eternal.

A happy life consists in tranquillity of mind.

Long life is denied us; therefore let us do something to show that we have lived.

While there's life, there's hope.

The life given us, by nature is short; but the memory of a well-spent life is eternal.

If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even before you have started.

No phase of life, whether public or private, can be free from duty.

By doubting we come at truth.

For even if the allotted space of life be short, it is long enough in which to live honorably and well.

History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time...

Other relaxations are peculiar to certain times, places and stages of life, but the study of letters is the nourishment of our youth, and the joy of our old age. They throw an additional splendor on prosperity, and are the resource and consolation of adversity; they delight at home, and are no embarrassment abroad; in short, they are company to us at night, our fellow travelers on a journey, and attendants in our rural recesses.

Socrates was the first to call philosophy down from the heavens and to place it in cities, and even to introduce it into homes and compel it to inquire about life and standards and goods and evils.

Inability to tell good from evil is the greatest worry of man's life.

The most desirable thing in life after health and modest means is leisure with dignity.

Man's life is ruled by fortune, not by wisdom.

For if that last day does not occasion an entire extinction, but a change of abode only, what can be more desirable? And if it, on the other hand, destroys and absolutely puts an end to us, what can be preferable to having a deep sleep fall on us in the midst of the fatigues of life and, being thus overtaken, to sleep to eternity?

For no phase of life, whether public or private, whether in business or in the home, whether one is working on what concerns oneself alone or dealing with another, can be without its moral duty; on the discharge of such duties depends all that is morally right, and on their neglect all that is morally wrong in life.

History illumes reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life

Our span of life is brief, but is long enough for us to live well and honestly.

A happy life consists in tranquility of mind.

Nature has lent us life at interest, like money, and has fixed no day for its payment.

No one has lived a short life who has performed its duties with unblemished character.

The spirit is the true self.

Life is short, but art lives forever.