Marcus Tullius Cicero Mind Quotations

Cultivation to the mind is as necessary as food to the body.

In so far as the mind is stronger than the body, so are the ills contracted by the mind more severe than those contracted by the body.

Virtue is a habit of the mind, consistent with nature and moderation and reason.

Nature has planted in our minds an insatiable longing to see the truth.

In a disordered mind, as in a disordered body, soundness of health is impossible.

The mind of each man is the man himself

Read at every wait; read at all hours; read within leisure; read in times of labor; read as one goes in; read as one goest out. The task of the educated mind is simply put: read to lead.

In a disturbed mind, as in a body in the same state, health can not exist.

A mind without instruction can no more bear fruit than can a field, however fertile, without cultivation.

The face is a picture of the mind with the eyes as its interpreter.

The cultivation of the mind is a kind of food supplied for the soul of man.

We cannot employ the mind to advantage when we are filled with excessive food and drink.

No sensible man ever imputes inconsistency to another for changing his minds.

All action is of the mind and the mirror of the mind is the face, its index the eyes.

Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind.

Each part of life has its own pleasures. Each has its own abundant harvest, to be garnered in season. We may grow old in body, but we need never grow old in mind and spirit. No one is as old as to think he or she cannot live one more year.

All things tend to corrupt perverted minds.

Our minds are rendered buoyant by exercise.

Dissimulation creeps gradually into the minds of men.

As the grace of man is in the mind, so the beauty of the mind is eloquence.

It is difficult to tell how much men's minds are conciliated by a kind manner and gentle speech.

The forehead is the gate of the mind.

Pleasure blinds (so to speak) the eyes of the mind, and has no fellowship with virtue.

It shows a weak mind not to bear prosperity as well as adversity with moderation.

This is a proof of a well-trained mind, to rejoice in what is good and to grieve at the opposite. [Lat., Ergo hoc proprium est animi bene constituti, et laetari bonis rebus, et dolere contrariis.]

The diseases of the mind are more and more destructive than those of the body. [Lat., Morbi perniciores pluresque animi quam corporis.]

When money is unreasonably coveted, it is a disease of the mind which is called avarice.

No sensible man (among the many things that have been written on this kind) ever imputed inconsistency to another for changing his mind. [Lat., Nemo doctus unquam (multa autem de hoc genere scripta sunt) mutationem consili inconstantiam dixit esse.]

It is a man's own dishonesty, his crimes, his wickedness, and boldness, that takes away from him soundness of mind; these are the furies, these the flames and firebrands, of the wicked.

To be endowed with strength by nature, to be actuated by the powers of the mind, and to have a certain spirit almost divine infused into you.

I have sworn with my tongue, but my mind is unsworn. [Lat., Juravi lingua, mentem injuratem gero.]

The happiest end of life is this: when the mind and the other senses being unimpaired, the same nature which put it together takes asunder her own work.

Death approaches, which is always impending like the stone over Tantalus: then comes superstition with which he who is imbued can never have peace of mind. [Lat., Accedit etiam mors, quae quasi saxum Tantalo semper impendit: tum superstitio, qua qui est imbutus quietus esse numquam potest.]

It is a great proof of talents to be able to recall the mind from the senses, and to separate thought from habit.

This seems to be advanced as the surest basis for our belief in the existence of gods, that there is no race so uncivilized, no one in the world so barbarous that his mind has no inkling of a belief in gods.

An old man with something of the youth in him, may feel young in mind and heart only.

A mental stain can neither be blotted out by the passage of time nor washed away by any waters.

Nature herself has imprinted on the minds of all the idea of God

The mind becomes accustomed to things by the habitual sight of them, and neither wonders nor inquires about the reasons for things it sees all the time.

Learning is a kind of natural food for the mind.

Our minds possess by nature an insatiable desire to know the truth.

Since an intelligence common to us all makes things known to us and formulates them in our minds, honorable actions are ascribed by us to virtue, and dishonorable actions to vice; and only a madman would conclude that these judgments are matters of opinion, and not fixed by nature.

As the scale of the balance must give way to the weight that presses it down, so the mind must of necessity yield to demonstration.

The human mind ever longs for occupation.