Plautus Quotes - Page 6

I seek the utmost pleasure and the least pain.

Disgrace is immortal, and living even when one thinks it dead.

There can be no profit, if the outlay exceeds it. [Non enim potest quaestus consistere, si eum sumptus superat.]

It is best to know the worst at once.

Virtue is the highest reward. Virtue truly goes before all things. Liberty, safety, life, property, parents, country, and children are protected and preserved. Virtue has all things in herself; he who has virtue has all things that are good attending him. [Lat., Virtus praemium est optimum. Virtus omnibus rebus anteit profecto. Libertas, salus, vita, res, parentes, Patria et prognati tutantur, servantur; Virtus omnia in se habet; omnia assunt bona, quem penes est vertus.]

Tattletales, and those who listen to their slander, by my good will, should all be hanged. The former by their tongues, the latter by their ears. [Lat., Homines qui gestant, quique auscultant crimina, si meo arbitratu liceat, omnes pendeant gestores linguis, auditores auribus.]

The woman who has the best perfume is she who has none.

Love has both its gall and honey in abundance: it has sweetness to the taste, but it presents bitterness also to satiety.

To ask that which is unjust at the hands of the just, is an injustice in itself; to expect that which is just from the unjust, is simple folly.

He who seeks for gain, must be at some expense.

If you want to do something, do it!

One eye-witness is of more weight than ten hearsays. Those who hear, speak of shat they have heard; whose who see, know beyond mistake. [Lat., Pluris est oculatus testis unus, quam auriti decem. Qui audiunt, audita dicunt; qui vident, plane sciunt.]

No one can be so welcome a guest that he will not become an annoyance when he has stayed three continuous days in a friend's house. [Lat., Hospes nullus tam in amici hospitium diverti potest, Quin ubi triduum continuum fuerit jam odiosus siet.

Keep what you have got; the known evil is best. [Lat., Habeas ut nactus; nota mala res optima est.]

As long as she is wise and good, a girl has sufficient dowry.

Whatever disgrace we may have deserved, it is almost always in our power to re-establish our character.

We are pouring our words into a sieve, and lose our labor. [Lat., In pertusum ingerimus dicta dolium, operam ludimus.]

Consider the little mouse, how sagacious an animal it is which never entrusts its life to one hole only.

It is a tiresome way of speaking, when you should despatch the business, to beat about the bush.

For I know that many good things have happened to many, when least expected; and that many hopes have been disappointed.

There are occasions when it is undoubtedly better to incur loss than to make gain.

I count him lost, who is lost to shame. [Lat., Nam ego illum periisse duco, cui quidem periit pudor.]

Courage is its own reward.

I love truth and wish to have it always spoken to me: I hate a liar. [Lat., Ego verum amo, verum volo mihi dici; mendacem odi.]

Drink, live like the Greeks, eat, gorge.