Cicero QUOTES

1 " A really cultured woman, like a really cultured man, is all the simpler and the less obtrusive for her knowledge; it has made her see herself and her opinions in something like just proportions; she does not make it a pedestal from which she flatters herself that she commands a complete view of men and things, but makes it a point of observation from which to form a right estimate of herself. She neither spouts poetry nor quotes Cicero on slight provocation; not because she thinks that a sacrifice must be made to the prejudices of men, but because that mode of exhibiting her memory and Latinity does not present itself to her as edifying or graceful "

― George Eliot , Silly Novels by Lady Novelists

2 " The melancholy of the antique world seems to me more profound than that of the moderns, all of whom more or less imply that beyond the dark void lies immortality. But for the ancients that ‘black hole’ is infinity itself; their dreams loom and vanish against a background of immutable ebony. No crying out, no convulsions—nothing but the fixity of the pensive gaze.

With the gods gone, and Christ not yet come, there was a unique moment, from Cicero to Marcus Aurelius, when man stood alone. Nowhere else do I find that particular grandeur. "

― Gustave Flaubert

3 " And then to my surprise in one of them I discovered the original manuscript of On Friendship. Puzzled, I unrolled it, thinking I must have brought it with me by mistake. But when I saw that Cicero had copied out at the top of the roll in his shaking hand a quotation from the text, on the importance of having friends, I realised it was a parting gift: If a man ascended into heaven and gazed upon the whole workings of the universe and the beauty of the stars, the marvellous sight would give him no joy if he had to keep it to himself. And yet, if only there had been someone to describe the spectacle to, it would have filled him with delight. Nature abhors solitude. "

― Robert Harris , Dictator (Cicero, #3)

4 " Just when the gods had ceased to be, and the Christ had not yet come, there was a unique moment in history, between Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, when man stood alone. "

― Gustave Flaubert , The Letters, 1830-1880

5 " ...if Clinton's answers come off as well-intended lectures, Obama is offering soaring sermons and generational opportunity. In 1960, the articulate Adlai Stevenson compared his own oratory unfavorably with John F. Kennedy's. " Do you remember," Stevenson said, " that in classical times when Cicero had finished speaking, the people said, 'How well he spoke,' but when Demosthenes had finished speaking, the people said, 'Let us march.' " At this hour, Obama is the Democrats' Demosthenes. "

6 " Death is terrible to Cicero desirable to Cato and indifferent to Socrates. "

7 " Surely the shortest commencement address in history - and for me one of the most memorable - was that of Dr. Harold E. Hyde President of New Hampshire's Plymouth State College. He reduced his message to the graduating class to these three ideals: 'Know yourself- Socrates. Control yourself- Cicero Give yourself - Christ.' "

8 " When Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero 106-43 BC ) was in 64 BC running for consul of Rome he was reported to be advised by his " campaign manager" that the voters " had rather you lied to them than refused them." "