Latin Quotes

The spiritual muscles I hadn't used for decades began to acquire some tone, and since they were Catholic muscles too, it was natural to look for a church to work out in.It was hard. Appalling though the predations exacted on the monastic liturgy were, they were nothing compared to the desecration exacted on the secular. Latin was gone entirely, replaced by dull, oppressive, anchorman English, slavishly translated from its sonorous source to be as plain and direct as possible. It didn't seem to have occurred to the well-meaning vandals who'd thrown out baby, bath, and bathwater that all ritual is a reaching out to the unknowable and can be accomplished only by the noncognitive: evocation, allusion, metaphor, incantation—the tools of the poet.

~ Tony Hendra

Per aspera ad astra, Papa,' I whispered. Through hardship to the stars.

~ Ruta Sepetys

Mens videt astra.(The soul sees the stars.)

~ Merrie Haskell

All hope abandon, ye who enter here.

~ Dante Alighieri

Facilis descensus Averno:Noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis;Sed revocare gradium superasque evadere ad auras,Hoc opus, hic labor est.(The gates of Hell are open night and day;Smooth the descent, and easy is the way:But to return, and view the cheerful skies,In this task and mighty labor lies.)

~ Virgil

Do you know who 'twas that first knew our Lord had caused Himself to be born? 'Twas the cock; he saw the star, and so he said–all the beasts could talk Latin in those days; he cried: 'Christus natus est!' He crowed these words so like a cock that Kristin fell to laughing heartily. And it did her good to laugh, for all the strange things Brother Edvin had just been saying had laid a burden of awe on her heart.The monk laughed himself: Ay, and when the ox heard that, he began to low: 'Ubi, ubi, ubi.' But the goat bleated, and said: 'Betlem, Betlem, Betlem.' And the sheep so longed to see Our Lady and her Son that she baa-ed out at once: 'Eamus, eamus!' And the new-born calf that lay in the straw, raised itself and stood upon its feet. 'Volo, volo, volo!' it said.

~ Sigrid Undset

 “Your Tim is so unmistakably a healthy extravert type. Mens stulta in corpore sano, and all that.”“Exactly,” she agreed.

~ John Wyndham

On the third, directly before me, were embedded more polished letters: PER OMNIA SAECULA SAECULORUM.For ever and ever. In the red light, the brushed steel glowed softly, like embers. The polish letters blazed.Without a hiss, For ever and ever slid aside, as though inviting me to eternity.

~ Dean Koontz

Mathemata mathematicis scribuntur.

~ Nicolaus Copernicus

A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up the details...

~ George Orwell