All Quotes

"Vellem nescire literas."

"Qualis artifex pereo."

"The people love Nero. He inspires in them both affection and respect. There is a reason for this which Tacitus omits. One can discern the reason for this popular feeling: Nero oppressed the great and never burdened the ordinary people. But Tacitus says nothing of this. He speaks of crimes. He speaks of them with passion. We, as a result, feel he is biased; he no longer inspires the same confidence. One is led to believe that he exaggerates; he explains nothing and appears satisfied with vignettes."

"Nero wasn’t worried at all when he heard the utterance of the Delphic Oracle: “Beware the age of seventy-three.” Plenty of time to enjoy himself still. He’s thirty. The deadline the god has given him is quite enough to cope with future dangers. … And in Spain Galba secretly musters and drills his army — Galba, the old man in his seventy-third year."

"Nero came to power when his mother poisoned her husband, the Emperor. As Emperor himself, Nero indulged his tendencies to debauchery and cruelty. No one was safe from him, especially those who failed to appreciate his self-proclaimed skill as a musician and actor. His extravagances bankrupted the Empire, provoking the revolts that finally deposed him. An admirer of Greek culture, he effectively rebuilt Rome after a devastating fire."

"The arts of the magician are said to have been called into action by Nero upon occasion of the assassination of his mother, Agrippina. He was visited with occasional fits of the deepest remorse in the recollection of his enormity. Not with-standing all the ostentatious applauses and congratulations which he obtained from the senate, the army and the people, he complained that he was perpetually haunted with the ghost of his mother, and pursued by the Furies with flaming torches and whips. He therefore cased himself to be attended by magicians, who employed their arts to conjure up the shade of Agrippina and to endeavour to obtain her forgiveness for the crime perpetrated by her son. We are not informed of the success of their evocations."

"God, save us from ourselves! We carry within us the elements of hell if we but choose to make them such. Ahaz, Judas, Nero, Borgia, Herod, all were once prattling infants in happy mother's arms."

"Nero saw himself as an artist; his enemies thought of him as a tyrant and a buffoon. The truth is, he was all three. He certainly wasn't very good at running an empire, but then, what did Rome expect? If you put a messed-up sixteen-year-old in charge of half the known world, you're asking for trouble. Rome learned the hard way. From now on, it abandoned the Julio-Claudian line of emperors in favour of skilled administrators. But Nero did leave his mark on history. Whatever else he wasn't, he was a showman. He did everything in a big way, from building his house to killing his mother. He thought of himself as an actor, but no part he ever played on the stage could match the drama, the spectacle and the sheer theatricality of his own life."

"The emperor who ‘fiddled while Rome burned’, Nero was the last of the Julio-Claudian dynasty that took Rome from Republic to one-man rule. Raised amidst violence and tyranny, he ruled with ludicrous vanity, demented whimsy and inept despotism. Few mourned his abdication and death amidst the chaos that he himself had created."

"The absolute ruler may be a Nero, but he is sometimes Titus or Marcus Aurelius; the people is often Nero, and never Marcus Aurelius."

"Thus Nero went up and down Greece and challenged the fiddlers at their trade. Æropus, a Macedonian king, made lanterns; Harcatius, the king of Parthia, was a mole-catcher; and Biantes, the Lydian, filed needles."

"You know my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled by the iron feet of oppression. There comes a time my friends, when people get tired of being plunged across the abyss of humiliation, where they experience the bleakness of nagging despair. There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life's July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November. There comes a time."

"We, the disinherited of this land, we who have been oppressed so long, are tired of going through the long night of captivity. And now we are reaching out for the daybreak of freedom and justice and equality."

"We are here, we are here this evening because we're tired now. And I want to say that we are not here advocating violence. We have never done that. I want it to be known throughout Montgomery and throughout this nation that we are Christian people. We believe in the Christian religion. We believe in the teachings of Jesus. The only weapon that we have in our hands this evening is the weapon of protest. That's all."

"We are not wrong, we are not wrong in what we are doing. If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. And if we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong. If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer that never came down to Earth. If we are wrong, justice is a lie, love has no meaning. And we are determined here in Montgomery to work and fight until "justice runs down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.""

"Dum satur est venter, gaudet caput inde libenter."

"Dum spiro, spero."

"Dum vivimus, vivamus!"

"Dum vita est, spes est."

"Ecce omnis, qui dicit vulgo proverbium, in te assumet illud dicens: Sicut mater, ita et filia ejus."

"Effectus sequitur causam."

"Eodem cubito, eadem trutina, pari libra."

"Errare humanum est."

"Ex granis fit acervus."

"Et ipsa scientia potestas est."

"Ex malis moribus bonae leges natae sunt."

"Ex nihilo nihil fit."

"Exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis."

"Excusatio non petita, accusatio manifesta."

"Extremis malis extrema remedia."

"Expecta bos olim herba."

"Facilis descensus Averni."

"Factis ut credam facis."

"Festina lente!"

"Fides facit fidem."

"Fidite Nemini"

"Finis origine pendet."

"Forma bonum fragile est."

"Fortes fortuna iuvat"

"Fraus hominum ad perniciem, et integritas ad salutem vocat."

"Fronti nulla fides."

"Generosus equus non curat canem latrantem."

"Gloriosum est iniurias oblivisci."

"Gutta cavat lapidem"

"Gutta cavat lapidem non bis, sed saepe cadendo; sic homo fit sapiens non bis, sed saepe legendo."

"Gutta cavat lapidem non vi, sed saepe cadendo"

"Historia est vitae magistra."

"Hodie mihi, cras tibi."

"Homines quod volunt credunt."

"Homo cogitat, Deus iudicat."