Latin Quotes

Status quo, you know, is Latin for 'the mess we're in'.

~ Ronald Reagan

Non est ad astra mollis e terris via - There is no easy way from the earth to the stars

~ Seneca

Fas est ab hoste doceri.One should learn even from one's enemies.

~ Ovid

A man leaves his great house because he's boredWith life at home, and suddenly returns,Finding himself no happier abroad.He rushes off to his villa driving like mad,You'ld think he's going to a house on fire,And yawns before he's put his foot inside,Or falls asleep and seeks oblivion,Or even rushes back to town again.So each man flies from himself (vain hope, becauseIt clings to him the more closely against his will)And hates himself because he is sick in mindAnd does not know the cause of his disease.

~ Titus Lucretius Carus

Pactum serva - Keep the faith

~ Horace

Saepe creat molles aspera spina rosas - Often the prickly thorn produces tender roses

~ Ovid

I started studying law, but this I could stand just for one semester. I couldn't stand more. Then I studied languages and literature for two years. After two years I passed an examination with the result I have a teaching certificate for Latin and Hungarian for the lower classes of the gymnasium, for kids from 10 to 14. I never made use of this teaching certificate. And then I came to philosophy, physics, and mathematics. In fact, I came to mathematics indirectly. I was really more interested in physics and philosophy and thought about those. It is a little shortened but not quite wrong to say: I thought I am not good enough for physics and I am too good for philosophy. Mathematics is in between.

~ George Pólya

Science is only a Latin word for knowledge

~ Carl Sagan

E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.And so we came forth, and once again beheld the stars.

~ William Styron

The difficulty of learning the dead languages does not arise from any superior abstruseness in the languages themselves, but in their being dead, and the pronunciation entirely lost. It would be the same thing with any other language when it becomes dead. The best Greek linguist that now exists does not understand Greek so well as a Grecian plowman did, or a Grecian milkmaid; and the same for the Latin, compared with a plowman or a milkmaid of the Romans; and with respect to pronunciation and idiom, not so well as the cows that she milked. It would therefore be advantageous to the state of learning to abolish the study of the dead languages, and to make learning consist, as it originally did, in scientific knowledge.

~ Thomas Paine

The success of my rule does not rely on my ability to recite obscure Latin verse.

~ Sherry Thomas

Motto for latin countries: If you're not late, you're not on time

~ Bogdan Vaida

Can't you see that I'm only advising you to beg yourself not to be so dumb?

~ Petronius Arbiter

Omnia Mutantur, Nihil Interit. 'Everything changes, but nothing is truly lost.

~ Neil Gaiman

It sounds to me, dear, as if your satirist is a bit like a monk. They both take a rather dim view of the world, and both try to do something abou

~ Tony Hendra

Nescire autem quid antequam natus sis acciderit, id est semper esse puerum. (To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.)

~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

Mister Cameron - I have read the unexpurgated Ovid, the love poems of Sappho, the Decameron in the original, and a great many texts in Greek and Latin histories that were not though fit for proper gentlemen to read, much less proper ladies. I know in precise detail what Caligula did to, and with, his sisters, and I can quote it to you in Latin or in my own translation if you wish. I am interested in historical truth, and truth in history is often unpleasant and distasteful to those of fine sensibility. I frankly doubt that you will produce anything to shock me.

~ Mercedes Lackey

My Friends I Will Always Remember, And My Enemies I Will Never Forget!

~ Latif Mercado

My Name Is Latif Mercado, And I Am... A Workaholic!

~ Latif Mercado

Aut viam inveniam aut faciam.I shall either find away, or make one

~ Latin Quote

...to be able to enjoy the life you have spent, is to live it twice.

~ Marcus Valerius Martialis

Ars moriendi ars vivendi est: the art of dying is the art of living.

~ Robert Charles Wilson

[Giordano] Bruno died, despised and suffering, after eight years of agony. From that moment, his works have attracted interest, and he has long been recognized as an important figure in the development of modern thought. Nevertheless, few are familiar with the many and often bewildering pages of his writings. His Italian works have their place in the history of Italian literature. The Latin works in prose and verse are much more bulky and diffuse, but the few who grapple with them are rewarded by passages of great beauty and eloquence.

~ Dorothea Singer

It was my first-year Latin teacher in high school who made me who made me discover I'd fallen in love with it (grammar). It took Latin to thrust me into bona fide alliance with words in their true meaning. Learning Latin fed my love for words upon words in continuation and modification, and the beautiful, sober, accretion of a sentence. I could see the achieved sentence finally standing there, as real, intact, and built to stay as the Mississippi State Capitol at the top of my street.

~ Eudora Welty

Latin is a dead tongue And Romans made songs! Then no one disagree: It delighted them in theory Now it's the Latin in me.

~ Ana Claudia Antunes

I have indeed lived and worked to my taste either in art or science. What more could a man desire? Knowledge has always been my goal. There is much that I shall leave behind undone…but something at least I was privileged to leave for the world to use, if it so intends…As the Latin poet said I will leave the table of the living like a guest who has eaten his fill. Yes, if I had another life to spend, I certainly would not waste it. But that cannot be, so why complain?

~ Léon Camille Marius Croizat

Saepa stilum vertas, iterum quae digna legi sint scripturas. (Turn the stylus [to erase] often if you would write something worthy of being reread.)

~ Horace

He was thirty-six years old, and six foot three. He spoke English to people and French to cats, and Latin to the birds. He had once nearly killed himself trying to read and ride a horse at the same time.

~ Katherine Rundell

Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.(Pluck the day [for it is ripe], trusting as little as possible in tomorrow.)

~ Horace

Out in the field, any connection with home just makes you weaker. It reminds you that you were once civilized, soft; and that can get you killed faster than a bullet through the head.

~ Henry Mosquera

Latin is already a dead language, man... don't make it any deader.

~ Jerry Scott

The most satisfying of languages, Latin.

~ Donna Tartt

He called it potentia because there's nothing quite like Latin for disguising the fact you're making it up as you go along.

~ Ben Aaronovitch

I should think a dead language would be rather boring, sociallyspeaking.

~ Sol Luckman

If the Romans had been obliged to learn Latin, they would never have found the time to conquer the world.

~ Heinrich Heine

I think we can all agree that the official language of the United States should be Latin.

~ Michelle Templet

Ira furor brevis est: animum rege: qui nisi paret imperat.(Anger is a brief madness: govern your mind [temper], for unless it obeys it commands.)

~ Horace

That was a good mark in Latin, and I am pleased with your steady improvement in it.

~ Theodore Roosevelt

If there's a password needed at the gates of heaven, only Latin will unlock it, he thinks.

~ Kimberly Morgan

Is it not lack of faith that leads men to fear the scrutiny of reason? If the destination is doubtful, than the path must be fraught with fear. A robust faith need not fear, for if God exists, then reason cannot help but lead us to Him. Cogito, ergo Deus est,'says St. Augustine, I think, therefore God is.

~ Donna Woolfolk Cross