Tacitus Quotes - Page 8

When men of talents are punished, authority is strengthened. [Lat., Punitis ingeniis, gliscit auctoritas.]

It is more reverent to believe in the works of the Deity than to comprehend them.

Noble character is best appreciated in those ages in which it can most readily develop.

Old things are always in good repute, present things in disfavor.

Cassius and Brutus were the more distinguished for that very circumstance that their portraits were absent. [Lat., Praefulgebant Cassius atque Brutus eo ipso, quod effigies eorum non videbantur.]

Falsehood avails itself of haste and uncertainty.

Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant. They make a wilderness and they call it peace.

[That form of] eloquence, the foster-child of licence, which fools call liberty. [Lat., Eloquentia, alumna licentiae, quam stulti libertatem vocabant.]

All enterprises that are entered into with indiscreet zeal may be pursued with great vigor at first, but are sure to collapse in the end.

We are corrupted by good fortune. [Lat., Felicitate corrumpimur.]

War will of itself discover and lay open the hidden and rankling wounds of the victorious party.

Eloquence wins its great and enduring fame quite as much from the benches of our opponents as from those of our friends.

Rulers always hate and suspect the next in succession. [Lat., Suspectum semper invisumque dominantibus qui proximus destinaretur.]

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 .

If we must fall, we should boldly meet the danger. [Lat., Si cadere necesse est, occurendum discrimini.]

Forethought and prudence are the proper qualities of a leader. [Lat., Ratio et consilium, propriae ducis artes.]

Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.

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.

All ancient history was written with a moral object; the ethical interest predominates almost to the exclusion of all others.

This I hold to be the chief office of history, to rescue virtuous actions from the oblivion to which a want of records would consign them, and that men should feel a dread of being considered infamous in the opinions of posterity, from their depraved expressions and base actions.

The powerful hold in deep remembrance an ill-timed pleasantry. [Lat., Facetiarum apud praepotentes in longum memoria est.]

Zealous in the commencement, careless in the end.

In private enterprises men may advance or recede, whereas they who aim at empire have no alternative between the highest success and utter downfall.

Posterity gives to every man his true honor. [Lat., Suum cuique decus posteritas rependet.]

Style, like the human body, is specially beautiful when, so to say, the veins are not prominent, and the bones cannot be counted, but when a healthy and sound blood fills the limbs, and shows itself in the muscles, and the very sinews become beautiful under a ruddy glow and graceful outline.