Quotes About Catullus

#1. All think what other people think;
All know the man their neighbor knows.
Lord, what would they say
Did their Catullus walk that way?

William Butler Yeats

#2. One attraction of Latin is that you can immerse yourself in the poems of Horace and Catullus without fretting over how to say, "Have a nice day."

Peter Brodie

#3. I hate and I love. You ask why I do this? I do not know, but I feel and I am tormented. - CATULLUS

Kami Garcia

#4. Why cannot we be delighted with an author, and even feel a predilection for him, without a dislike of others? An admiration of Catullus or Virgil, of Tibullus or Ovid, is never to be heightened by a discharge of bile on Horace.

Walter Savage Landor

#5. Genius now and then produces a lucky trifle. We still read the Dove of Anacreon, and Sparrow of Catullus; and a writer naturally pleases himself with a performance which owes nothing to the subject.

Samuel Johnson

#6. My sweetest Lesbia, let us live and love, And though the sager sort our deeds reprove, Let us not weigh them. Heaven's great lamps do dive Into their west, and straight again revive, But soon as once set is our little light, Then must we sleep one ever-during night. See Catullus 200:5.

Thomas Campion

#7. When Catullus expresses his love and hate for Lesbia, he is not obviously voicing a wish to rid himself of one or the other of these two sentiments. Not all contradictions resolve into temporal change of belief or desire.

Raymond Geuss

#8. I hate & love. And if you should ask how I do both,
I couldn't say; but I feel it , and it shivers me.

Catullus

#9. Now Spring restores the balmy heat, now Zephyr's sweet breezes calm the rage of the equinoctial sky.

Catullus

#10. For the godly poet must be chaste himself, but there is no need for his verses to be so.

Catullus

#11. But your own tears blind you to mine.
I am not neglectful of friendship,
but we two squat in the same coracle,
we are both swamped by the same stormy waters,
I have not the gifts of a happy man ... Often enough.

Catullus

#12. In perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale. (Forever and ever, brother, hail and farewell.)

Catullus

#13. Godlike the man who
sits at her side, who
watches and catches
that laughter
which (softly) tears me
to tatters: nothing is
left of me, each time
I see her ...

Catullus

#14. Give up wanting to deserve any thanks from anyone, or thinking anybody can be grateful.

Catullus

#15. Some lioness whelped you on a mountain rock
In Libya, or else you're Scylla's child
Whose womb's all barking dogs, for only a wild
Beast with the nature of a beast could mock
A desperate man making a last appeal
Down on his knees. Bitch heart too hard to feel!

Catullus

#16. What women say to lovers, you'll agree, One writes on running water or on air.

Catullus

#17. We see not our own backs.

Catullus

#18. Stop wishing to merit anyone's gratitude or thinking that anyone can become grateful.

Catullus

#19. Ah, what is more blessed than to put cares away, when the mind lays by its burden, and tired with labor of far travel we have come to our own home and rest on the couch we longed for? This it is which alone is worth all these toils.

Catullus

#20. There is nothing more foolish than a foolish laugh. Risu inepto res ineptior nulla est

Catullus

#21. What a woman tells her lover in desire
should be written out on air & running water.

Catullus

#22. Odi et amo; quare fortasse requiris, nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.
(my translation: I hate and I love, you ask why I do this, I do not know, but I feel and I am tormented)

Catullus

#23. Nothing is more silly than silly laughter.

Catullus

#24. Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then a thousand more.

Catullus

#25. I hate and love. You ask, perhaps, how can that be? I know not, but I feel the agony.

Catullus

#26. It is difficult to lay aside a confirmed passion.

Catullus

#27. Hail and farewell

Catullus

#28. I hate and I love, and who can tell me why?

Catullus

#29. Ave Atque Vale
Hail and farewell

Catullus

#30. Who now travels that dark path from whose bourne they say no one returns.
[Lat., Qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum
Illue unde negant redire quemquam.]

Catullus

#31. Away with you, water, destruction of wine!

Catullus

#32. So a maiden, while she remains untouched, remains dear to her own; but when she has lost her chaste flower with sullied body, she remains neither lovely to boys nor dear to girls.

Catullus

#33. Id Faciam
What I hate I love. Ask the crucified hand that holds
the nail that now is driven into itself, why.

Catullus

#34. My lady's sparrow is dead, the sparrow which was my lady's delight

Catullus

#35. I hate and I love. And if you ask me how, I do not know: I only feel it, and I am torn in two.

Catullus

#36. I have lost you, my brother
And your death has ended
The spring season
Of my happiness,
our house is buried with you
And buried the laughter that you taught me.
There are no thoughts of love nor of poems
In my head
Since you died.

Catullus

#37. Every one has his faults: but we do not see the wallet on our own backs.

Catullus

#38. I can imagine no greater misfortune for a cultured people than to see in the hands of the rulers not only the civil, but also the religious power.

Catullus

#39. My mind's sunk so low, Claudia, because of you, wrecked itself on your account so bad already, that I couldn't like you if you were the best of women, -or stop loving you, no matter what you do.

Catullus

#40. Let us live and love, nor give a damn what sour old men say.
The sun that sets may rise again, but when our light has sunk into the earth it is gone forever.

Catullus

#41. I write of youth, of love, and have access by these to sing of cleanly wantonness.

Catullus

#42. You think I'm a sissy?
I will sodomize you and face-fuck you.

Catullus

#43. The vows that woman makes to her fond lover are only fit to be written on air or on the swiftly passing stream.

Catullus

#44. I hate and love. And why, perhaps you'll ask.
I don't know: but I feel, and I'm tormented.

Catullus

#45. Oh, this age! How tasteless and ill-bred it is.

Catullus

#46. Better a sparrow, living or dead, than no birdsong at all.

Catullus

#47. I hate and I love. Why do I do this, you may ask? I do not know, but I feel it, and I am tortured.

Catullus

#48. What woman says to fond lover should be written on air or the swift water.
[Lat., Mulier cupido quod dicit amanti,
In vento et rapida scribere oportet aqua.]

Catullus

#49. I hate and I love. Wherefore do I so, peradventure thou askest. I know not, but I feel it to be thus and I suffer.

Catullus

#50. But you shall not escape my iambics.

Catullus

#51. I hate and I love
Why do I, you ask ?
I don't know, but it's happening
and it hurts

Catullus