Top 100 Quotes About Tacitus
#1. All preceptors should have that kind of genius described by Tacitus, "equal to their business, but not above it;" a patient industry, with competent erudition; a mind depending more on its correctness than its originality, and on its memory rather than on its invention.
Charles Caleb Colton
#2. The Roman historian Tacitus claimed that the Germanic peoples always drank alcohol while holding councils to prevent anyone from lying.
David Eagleman
#3. Tacitus has written an entire work on the manners of the Germans. This work is short, but it comes from the pen of Tacitus, who was always concise, because he saw everything at a glance.
Tacitus
#4. I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton and Euclid; and I find myself much the happier.
Thomas Jefferson
#5. To live without having a Cicero and a Tacitus at hand seems to me as if it was aprivation of one of my limbs.
John Quincy Adams
#6. Cornelius Tacitus when he says, that men are readier to pay back injuries than benefits, since to requite a benefit is felt to be a burthen, to return an injury a gain.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#7. It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say; when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth into a liar - that I call an achievement.
Horace
#8. It is difficult at times to repress the thought that history is about as instructive as an abattoir; that Tacitus was right and that peace is merely the desolation left behind after the decisive operations of merciless power.
Seamus Heaney
#9. There was room for them. A great deal of Italy, back then, was forest. Where man goes, trees die; or, to paraphrase Tacitus, we make a desert and call it progress.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#10. You're only delaying the inevitable. I have the Tacitus. I am invincible. The Tacitus told me of Tiberium missiles, of invulnerable flying ships, of real-time genetic mutation. More than alien. More than human! The next step in our evolution as a species!
Kane
#12. Chief among the forces affecting political folly is lust for power, named by Tacitus as the most flagrant of all passions.
Barbara W. Tuchman
#13. The revolution of ages may bring round the same calamities; but ages may revolve without producing a Tacitus to describe them.
Edward Gibbon
#14. I could recite you the whole of Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch, Titus Livius, Tacitus, Strada, Jornandes, Dante, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Spinoza, Machiavelli, and Bossuet. I name only the most important." "You
Alexandre Dumas
#15. The love of fame is a love that even the wisest of men are reluctant to forgo.
Tacitus
#16. Every recreant who proved his timidity in the hour of danger, was afterwards boldest in words and tongue.
Tacitus
#17. It is the nature of the human disposition to hate him whom you have injured.
Tacitus
#18. Nature gives liberty even to dumb animals.
Tacitus
#19. The repose of nations cannot be secure without arms, armies cannot be maintained without pay, nor can the pay be produced without taxes
Tacitus
#20. We see many who are struggling against adversity who are happy, and more although abounding in wealth, who are wretched.
Tacitus
#21. In peace alone reason was heard and merit distinguished; but in the rage of war the blind steel spared the innocent no more than the guilty.
Tacitus
#22. Zealous in the commencement, careless in the end.
Tacitus
#23. The principal office of history I take to be this: to prevent virtuous actions from being forgotten, and that evil words and deeds should fear an infamous reputation with posterity.
Tacitus
#24. When perfect sincerity is expected, perfect freedom must be allowed.
Tacitus
#25. There was more courage in bearing trouble than in escaping from it; the brave and the energetic cling to hope, even in spite of fortune; the cowardly and the indolent are hurried by their fears,' said Plotius Firmus, Roman Praetorian Guard.
Tacitus
#26. Crime, once exposed, has no refuge but in audacity.
Tacitus
#27. The Romans brought devestation, but they called it peace.
Tacitus
#28. Great empires are not maintained by timidity.
Tacitus
#29. Deos fortioribus adesse. The gods support those who are stronger.
Tacitus
#30. The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.
Tacitus
#31. Eloquence wins its great and enduring fame quite as much from the benches of our opponents as from those of our friends.
Tacitus
#32. Benefits are acceptable, while the receiver thinks he may return them; but once exceeding that, hatred is given instead of thanks.
[Lat., Beneficia usque eo laeta sunt dum videntur exsolvi posse; ubi multum antevenere pro gratia odium redditur.]
Tacitus
#33. He that fights and runs away, May turn and fight another day; But he that is in battle slain, Will never rise to fight again.
Tacitus
#34. By punishing men of talent we confirm their authority.
Tacitus
#35. Nothing mortal is so unstable and subject to change as power which has no foundation.
Tacitus
#36. Liberty is given by nature even to mute animals.
Tacitus
#37. More faults are often committed while we are trying to oblige than while we are giving offense.
Tacitus
#38. An eminent reputation is as dangerous as a bad one.
Tacitus
#39. No one in Germany laughs at vice, nor do they call it the fashion to corrupt and to be corrupted.
Tacitus
#40. Laws were most numerous when the commonwealth was most corrupt
Tacitus
#41. If you would know who controls you see who you may not criticise.
Tacitus
#42. All bodies are slow in growth but rapid in decay.
Tacitus
#43. Fear is not in the habit of speaking truth; when perfect sincerity is expected, perfect freedom must be allowed; nor has anyone who is apt to be angry when he hears the truth any cause to wonder that he does not hear it.
Tacitus
#44. The wicked find it easier to coalesce for seditious purposes than for concord in peace.
Tacitus
#45. All ancient history was written with a moral object; the ethical interest predominates almost to the exclusion of all others.
Tacitus
#46. Valor is the contempt of death and pain.
Tacitus
#47. The word liberty has been falsely used by persons who, being degenerately profligate in private life, and mischievous in public, had no hope left but in fomenting discord.
Tacitus
#48. Fortes et strenuos etiam contra fortunam insistere, timidos et ignoros ad desperationem formidine properare - the brave and bold persist even against fortune; the timid and cowardly rush to despair through fear alone
Tacitus
#49. The images of twenty of the most illustrious families the Manlii, the Quinctii, and other names of equal splendour were carried before it [the bier of Junia]. Those of Brutus and Cassius were not displayed; but for that very reason they shone with pre-eminent lustre.
Tacitus
#50. Even the bravest men are frightened by sudden terrors.
Tacitus
#51. The changeful change of circumstances.
[Lat., Varia sors rerum.]
Tacitus
#52. War will of itself discover and lay open the hidden and rankling wounds of the victorious party.
Tacitus
#53. Reason and calm judgment, the qualities specially belonging to a leader.
Tacitus
#54. All things atrocious and shameless flock from all parts to Rome.
Tacitus
#55. The views of the multitude are neither bad nor good.
[Lat., Neque mala, vel bona, quae vulgus putet.]
Tacitus
#56. If we must fall, we should boldly meet our fate.
Tacitus
#57. Modest fame is not to be despised by the highest characters.
[Lat., Modestiae fama neque summis mortalibus spernenda est.]
Tacitus
#58. No hatred is so bitter as that of near relations.
Tacitus
#59. What is today supported by precedents will hereafter become a precedent.
Tacitus
#60. In valor there is hope.
Tacitus
#61. So as you go into battle, remember your ancestors and remember your descendants.
Tacitus
#62. They make solitude, which they call peace.
Tacitus
#63. Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.
Tacitus
#64. Old things are always in good repute, present things in disfavor.
Tacitus
#65. That cannot be safe which is not honourable.
Tacitus
#66. Power won by crime no one ever yet turned to a good purpose.
Tacitus
#67. It is not becoming to grieve immoderately for the dead.
Tacitus
#68. One who is allowed to sin, sins less
Tacitus
#69. Even for learned men, love of fame is the last thing to be given up.
Tacitus
#70. Rumor is not always wrong
Tacitus
#71. In the struggle between those seeking power there is no middle course.
Tacitus
#72. A desire to resist oppression is implanted in the nature of man.
Tacitus
#73. Kindness, so far as we can return it, is agreeable.
Tacitus
#74. Be assured those will be thy worst enemies, not to whom thou hast done evil, but who have done evil to thee. And those will be thy best friends, not to whom thou hast done good, but who have done good to thee.
Tacitus
#75. Bodies are slow of growth, but are rapid in their dissolution.
[Lat., Corpora lente augescent, cito extinguuntur.]
Tacitus
#76. Flattery labors under the odious charge of servility.
Tacitus
#77. Bottling up his malice to be suppressed and brought out with increased violence.
Tacitus
#79. Other men have acquired fame by industry, but this man by indolence.
Tacitus
#80. Love of fame is the last thing even learned men can bear to be parted from.
Tacitus
#81. When men are full of envy they disparage everything, whether it be good or bad.
Tacitus
#82. Posterity gives every man his true value.
Tacitus
#83. To rob, to ravage, to murder, in their imposing language, are the arts of civil policy. When they have made the world a solitude, they call it peace.
[Lat., Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium, atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.]
Tacitus
#84. Keen at the start, but careless at the end.
Tacitus
#85. Necessity reforms the poor, and satiety reforms the rich.
Tacitus
#86. There are odious virtues; such as inflexible severity, and an integrity that accepts of no favor.
Tacitus
#87. Posterity will pay everyone their due.
Tacitus
#88. They even say that an altar dedicated to Ulysses , with the addition of the name of his father, Laertes , was formerly discovered on the same spot, and that certain monuments and tombs with Greek inscriptions, still exist on the borders of Germany and Rhaetia .
Tacitus
#89. [That form of] eloquence, the foster-child of licence, which fools call liberty.
[Lat., Eloquentia, alumna licentiae, quam stulti libertatem vocabant.]
Tacitus
#90. It is common, to esteem most what is most unknown.
Tacitus
#91. The grove is the centre of their whole religion. It is regarded as the cradle of the race and the dwelling-place of the supreme god to whom all things are subject and obedient.
Tacitus
#92. When a woman has lost her chastity she will shrink from nothing.
Tacitus
#93. The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.
Tacitus
#94. The lust of fame is the last that a wise man shakes off.
Tacitus
#95. Victor and vanquished never unite in substantial agreement.
Tacitus
#96. So obscure are the greatest events, as some take for granted any hearsay, whatever its source, others turn truth into falsehood, and both errors find encouragement with posterity.
Tacitus
#97. In all things there is a kind of law of cycles.
[Lat., Rebus cunctis inest quidam velut orbis.]
Tacitus
#98. In careless ignorance they think it civilization, when in reality it is a portion of their slavery ... To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false pretenses, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.
Tacitus
#99. Good turns are pleasing only in so far as they seem repayable; much beyond that we repay with hatred, not gratitude.
Tacitus
#100. Rumor does not always err; it sometimes even elects a man.
Tacitus
