Top 100 Tacitus's Quotes
#1. Kindness, so far as we can return it, is agreeable.
Tacitus
#2. Keen at the start, but careless at the end.
Tacitus
#3. 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
#4. Posterity gives every man his true value.
Tacitus
#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. When men are full of envy they disparage everything, whether it be good or bad.
Tacitus
#7. Love of fame is the last thing even learned men can bear to be parted from.
Tacitus
#8. Other men have acquired fame by industry, but this man by indolence.
Tacitus
#10. Bottling up his malice to be suppressed and brought out with increased violence.
Tacitus
#11. Flattery labors under the odious charge of servility.
Tacitus
#12. Bodies are slow of growth, but are rapid in their dissolution.
[Lat., Corpora lente augescent, cito extinguuntur.]
Tacitus
#13. 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
#14. Necessity reforms the poor, and satiety reforms the rich.
Tacitus
#15. A desire to resist oppression is implanted in the nature of man.
Tacitus
#16. In the struggle between those seeking power there is no middle course.
Tacitus
#17. Rumor is not always wrong
Tacitus
#18. Even for learned men, love of fame is the last thing to be given up.
Tacitus
#19. One who is allowed to sin, sins less
Tacitus
#20. It is not becoming to grieve immoderately for the dead.
Tacitus
#21. Power won by crime no one ever yet turned to a good purpose.
Tacitus
#22. That cannot be safe which is not honourable.
Tacitus
#23. Old things are always in good repute, present things in disfavor.
Tacitus
#24. Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.
Tacitus
#25. I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton and Euclid; and I find myself much the happier.
Thomas Jefferson
#26. 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
#27. The majority merely disagreed with other people's proposals, and, as so often happens in these disasters, the best course always seemed the one for which it was now too late.
Tacitus
#28. This I regard as history's highest function, to let no worthy action be uncommemorated, and to hold out the reprobation of posterity as a terror to evil words and deeds.
Tacitus
#29. Reckless adventure is the fool's hazard.
Tacitus
#30. [The Jews have] an attitude of hostility and hatred towards all others.
Tacitus
#31. Conspicuous by his absence.
Tacitus
#32. The desire for glory clings even to the best men longer than any other passion.
Tacitus
#33. [Asiaticus responds] Ask your sons, Suillius. They will testify to my masculinity.
Tacitus
#34. It is of eloquence as of a flame; it requires matter to feed it, and motion to excite it; and it brightens as it burns.
Tacitus
#35. Rumor does not always err; it sometimes even elects a man.
Tacitus
#36. Good turns are pleasing only in so far as they seem repayable; much beyond that we repay with hatred, not gratitude.
Tacitus
#37. 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
#38. In all things there is a kind of law of cycles.
[Lat., Rebus cunctis inest quidam velut orbis.]
Tacitus
#39. They make solitude, which they call peace.
Tacitus
#40. Victor and vanquished never unite in substantial agreement.
Tacitus
#41. The lust of fame is the last that a wise man shakes off.
Tacitus
#42. The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.
Tacitus
#43. When a woman has lost her chastity she will shrink from nothing.
Tacitus
#44. 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
#45. It is common, to esteem most what is most unknown.
Tacitus
#46. [That form of] eloquence, the foster-child of licence, which fools call liberty.
[Lat., Eloquentia, alumna licentiae, quam stulti libertatem vocabant.]
Tacitus
#47. 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
#48. 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
#49. Posterity will pay everyone their due.
Tacitus
#50. There are odious virtues; such as inflexible severity, and an integrity that accepts of no favor.
Tacitus
#51. The Romans brought devestation, but they called it peace.
Tacitus
#52. An eminent reputation is as dangerous as a bad one.
Tacitus
#53. More faults are often committed while we are trying to oblige than while we are giving offense.
Tacitus
#54. Liberty is given by nature even to mute animals.
Tacitus
#55. 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
#56. Nothing mortal is so unstable and subject to change as power which has no foundation.
Tacitus
#57. By punishing men of talent we confirm their authority.
Tacitus
#58. 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
#59. 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
#60. Eloquence wins its great and enduring fame quite as much from the benches of our opponents as from those of our friends.
Tacitus
#61. The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.
Tacitus
#62. Deos fortioribus adesse. The gods support those who are stronger.
Tacitus
#63. Great empires are not maintained by timidity.
Tacitus
#64. No one in Germany laughs at vice, nor do they call it the fashion to corrupt and to be corrupted.
Tacitus
#65. Crime, once exposed, has no refuge but in audacity.
Tacitus
#66. 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
#67. When perfect sincerity is expected, perfect freedom must be allowed.
Tacitus
#68. 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
#69. Zealous in the commencement, careless in the end.
Tacitus
#70. 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
#71. We see many who are struggling against adversity who are happy, and more although abounding in wealth, who are wretched.
Tacitus
#72. The repose of nations cannot be secure without arms, armies cannot be maintained without pay, nor can the pay be produced without taxes
Tacitus
#73. Nature gives liberty even to dumb animals.
Tacitus
#74. It is the nature of the human disposition to hate him whom you have injured.
Tacitus
#75. Every recreant who proved his timidity in the hour of danger, was afterwards boldest in words and tongue.
Tacitus
#76. Even the bravest men are frightened by sudden terrors.
Tacitus
#77. So as you go into battle, remember your ancestors and remember your descendants.
Tacitus
#78. In valor there is hope.
Tacitus
#79. What is today supported by precedents will hereafter become a precedent.
Tacitus
#80. No hatred is so bitter as that of near relations.
Tacitus
#81. Modest fame is not to be despised by the highest characters.
[Lat., Modestiae fama neque summis mortalibus spernenda est.]
Tacitus
#82. If we must fall, we should boldly meet our fate.
Tacitus
#83. 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
#84. The views of the multitude are neither bad nor good.
[Lat., Neque mala, vel bona, quae vulgus putet.]
Tacitus
#85. All things atrocious and shameless flock from all parts to Rome.
Tacitus
#86. Reason and calm judgment, the qualities specially belonging to a leader.
Tacitus
#87. War will of itself discover and lay open the hidden and rankling wounds of the victorious party.
Tacitus
#88. The changeful change of circumstances.
[Lat., Varia sors rerum.]
Tacitus
#89. The love of fame is a love that even the wisest of men are reluctant to forgo.
Tacitus
#90. The Roman historian Tacitus claimed that the Germanic peoples always drank alcohol while holding councils to prevent anyone from lying.
David Eagleman
#91. 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
#92. 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
#93. 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
#94. Valor is the contempt of death and pain.
Tacitus
#95. All ancient history was written with a moral object; the ethical interest predominates almost to the exclusion of all others.
Tacitus
#96. The wicked find it easier to coalesce for seditious purposes than for concord in peace.
Tacitus
#97. 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
#98. All bodies are slow in growth but rapid in decay.
Tacitus
#99. If you would know who controls you see who you may not criticise.
Tacitus
#100. Laws were most numerous when the commonwealth was most corrupt
Tacitus
