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Favorite Quotes from Ancient Times

T

the necropolitan

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From Sallust to Shakespeare, Catullus to Kierkegaard, there has been a multitude of great things said by our predecessors. What's your favorite old-timey quote that inspires you, makes you laugh, brings a big "baaaawwww!" to your eyes, or just in general elicits a response?

Easy mode: Give the quote in English.
Challenge mode: Give the quote in the original and English.

Here's one I've been ruminating on, lately:
"Ποταμοῖς τοῖς αὐτοῖς ἐμβαίνομέν τε καὶ οὐκ ἐμβαίνομεν, εἶμέν τε καὶ οὐκ εἶμεν."
"We both step and do not step in the same rivers. We are and are not."
-Heraclitus

And here's one, just for the lulz...
"Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo,"
"I will sodomize you and face-fuck you,"
-Catullus
 
"le subconscient destructeur ou servieteur du moi?"
-?

" 'for the advent here is a shadow of sanctity which is with the face, and a shadow of light is not darkness but illumination' "

-theo
 
Trite, but awesome.
Marcus Antonius:
And Caesar's spirit, raging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
Cry "Havoc!" and let slip the dogs of war,
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.
 
psychopath said:
Trite, but awesome.
Marcus Antonius:
And Caesar's spirit, raging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
Cry "Havoc!" and let slip the dogs of war,
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.
Click to expand...

I heard part of this quote in a movie recently, but I didn't know it was from Julius Caesar. I figured it'd be from one of the English historical plays. Maybe the one where they drop the "band of bros" line.
 
I particularly like this one:
If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.
Socrates
 
^ Yes I really liked that one. One's that stood out to me:

"Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live."

"Be as you wish to seem"
 
I forgot to mention Voltaire in my first post.

A few good ones:

"An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination."

"Common sense is not so common"

"Everything's fine today, that is our illusion."

"Now is no time to be making new enemies."
(When asked on his deathbed by a priest to renounce the devil and turn to God.)

"When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion. "

"Man is free at the instant he wants to be"
 
the necropolitan said:
And here's one, just for the lulz...
"Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo,"
"I will sodomize you and face-fuck you,"
-Catullus
Click to expand...

I think I love you for this one. Catullus is my favorite, and I was actually thinking about posting that exact quote when I saw the thread title...Poem 16 I believe, so dirty and lovely.

Another good Latin one is:
Amicus omnibus amicus nemini. - Anonymous
"A friend to all is a friend to none."

This one is from Catullus 85:
"Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?
Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior."

"I hate and I love. Why I do this, perhaps you ask? I do not know, but I feel it and it hurts." (I took some literary freedom with this one and translated it how I think of it, but clearly I didn't follow the exact Latin or it wouldn't sound very fluent)


<3 Classics Lover
 
"once you know you know nothing, then you know everything" -unknown : socrates?

"he who never made a mistake never tried anything new." -chinese proverb

"he who cannot obey himself will be commanded." -nietzsche

"...and those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music." -nietzsche

"when faced with two difficult choices, simply toss a coin. it works not because it settles the question for you, but because, in that brief moment when the coin is in the air, you suddenly know what you are hoping for." -unknown

"all drives are tyrannical; every drive has its ethic." -nietzsche
 
Discover thou what is
The strong creature from before the flood,
Without flesh, without bone,
Without vein, without blood,
Without head, without feet;
It will neither be older nor younger
Than at the beginning.
Behold how the sea whitens
When first it comes,
When it comes from the south,
When it strikes on coasts.
It is in the field, it is in the wood,
But the eye cannot perceive it.
One Being has prepared it,
By a tremendous blast,
To wreak vengeance
On Maelgan Gwynedd.
Click to expand...

- Taliesin
 
"Some men are judges, these August days, sitting on benches, even till the court rises; they sit judging there honorably, between the seasons and between meals, leading a civil, politic life, arbitrating ... it may be, from highest noon until the red vesper sinks into the west. The fisherman, meanwhile, stands in three feet of water, under the same summer's sun, arbitrating in other cases between muck-worm and shiner, amid the fragrance of water-lilies, mint, and pontederia, leading his life many rods from the dry land, within a pole's length of where the larger fishes swim. Human life is to him very much like a river. "
Click to expand...
- Henry David Thoreau


... not thaaat ancient.
;-p
 
" 'Everything is permissible' " but not everything is helpful. " 'Everything is permissible,' " but not everything builds up. No one should seek his own but of the other person."

Corinthians 10:23
_____________________________________________
... love it.
 
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