Cicero Quotes

Law applied to its extreme is the greatest injustice

The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.

Knowledge which is divorced from justice may be called cunning rather than wisdom.

The man who backbites an absent friend, nay, who does not stand up for him when another blames him, the man who angles for bursts of laughter and for the repute of a wit, who can invent what he never saw, who cannot keep a secret — that man is black at heart: mark and avoid him.

Where is there dignity unless there is honesty?

Nemo enim est tam senex qui se annum non putet posse vivere.

(No one is so old as to think that he cannot live one more year.)

Though silence is not necessarily an admission, it is not a denial, either.

Wretched indeed is the man who in the course of a long life hasn't learned that death is nothing to be feared.

Never injure a friend, even in jest.

Nemo est qui tibi sapientius suadere possit te ipso: numquam labere, si te audies.

(Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself: if you heed yourself, you'll never go wrong.)

God's law is 'right reason.' When perfectly understood it is called 'wisdom.' When applied by government in regulating human relations it is called 'justice.

To be content with what we possess is the greatest and most secure of riches.

Ability without honor is useless.

a friend is a second self

What one has, one ought to use; and whatever he does, he should do with all his might.