Top 15 Catullus Quotes

If anything ever happened to any one who eagerly longed and never hoped, that is a true pleasure to the mind.

Si quicquam cupido optantique optigit umquam
insperanti, hoc est gratum animo proprie.

Wandering through many countries and over many seas I come, my brother, to these sorrowful obsequies, to present you with the last guerdon of death, and speak, though in vain, to your silent ashes, since fortune has taken your own self away from me—alas, my brother, so cruelly torn from me! Yet now meanwhile take these offerings, which by the custom of our fathers have been handed down—a sorrowful tribute—for a funeral sacrifice; take them, wet with many tears of a brother, and for ever, my brother, hail and farewell!

Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus
Advenio has miseras, frater, ad inferias,
Ut te postremo donarem munere mortis
Et mutam nequiquam alloquerer cinerem.
Quandoquidem fortuna mihi tete abstulit ipsum,
Heu miser indigne frater adempte mihi,
Nunc tamen interea haec prisco quae more parentum
Tradita sunt tristi munere ad inferias,
Accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu,
Atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale.

I hate and love. Why I do so, perhaps you ask. I know not, but I feel it, and I am in torment.

Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris. nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

Si vitam puriter egi.

It is difficult suddenly to lay aside a long-standing love.

Difficile est longum subito deponere amorem.

Siqua recordanti benefacta priora voluptas
Est homini.

Huc est mens deducta tua mea, Lesbia, culpa
atque ita se officio perdidit ipsa suo,
ut iam nec bene velle queat tibi, si optima fias,
nec desistere amare, omnia si facias.

Leave off wishing to deserve any thanks from anyone, or thinking that anyone can ever become grateful.

Desine de quoquam quicquam bene velle mereri,
Aut aliquem fieri posse putare pium.

What a woman says to her ardent lover should be written in wind and running water.

Mulier cupido quod dicit amanti in vento et rapida scribere oportet aqua.