Titus Livius Quotes

The populace is like the sea, motionless in itself, but stirred by every wind, even the lightest breeze.

Law is a thing which is insensible, and inexorable, more beneficial and more profitious to the weak than to the strong; it admits of no mitigation nor pardon, once you have overstepped its limits.

A fraudulent intent, however carefully concealed at the outset, will generally, in the end, betray itself.

We do not learn this only from the event, which is the master of fools.

Such is the nature of crowds: either they are humble and servile or arrogant and dominating. They are incapable of making moderate use of freedom, which is the middle course, or of keeping it.

The Aitolians, the Akarnanians, the Macedonians, men of the same speech, are united or disunited by trivial causes that arise from time to time; with aliens, with barbarians, all Greeks wage and will wage eternal war; for they are enemies by the will of nature, which is eternal, and not from reasons that change from day to day...

Nature has ordained that the man who is pleading his own cause before a large audience, will be more readily listened to than he who has no object in view other than the public benefit.

He would not anticipate those counsels which are rather bestowed by circumstances on men, than by men on circumstances.

No law can possibly meet the convenience of every one: we must be satisfied if it be beneficial on the whole and to the majority.

This above all makes history useful and desirable: it unfolds before our eyes a glorious record of exemplary actions.

The most honorable, as well as the safest course, is to rely entirely upon valour.

Many things complicated by nature are restored by reason.

I approach these questions unwillingly, as it wounds, but no cure can be effected without touching upon and handling them.

No crime can ever be defended on rational grounds.

Good fortune and a good disposition are rarely given to the same man.