Ovid Quotes

I flee who chases me and chase who flees me.

Thus I am not able to exist either with you or without you; and I seem not to know my own wishes.

The cause is hidden. The effect is visible to all.

Barbarus hic ego sum, quia non intelligor illis.

(In this place I am a barbarian, because men do not understand me.)

All things change; nothing perishes.

Greatly he failed, but he had greatly dared.

"Bene vixit, bene qui latuit."

(To live well is to live concealed.)

In the make-up of human beings, intelligence counts for more than our hands, and that is our true strength.

...et ignotas animum dimittit in artes, naturamque nouat. (to arts unknown he bends his wits, and alters nature.)

Neither can the wave that has passed by be recalled, nor the hour which has passed return again.

And besides, we lovers fear everything

My soul would sing of metamorphoses.
But since, o gods, you were the source of these
bodies becoming other bodies, breathe
your breath into my book of changes: may
the song I sing be seamless as its way
weaves from the world's beginning to our day.

All right, boy, skewer me. I've dropped my defenses,
I'm an easy victim. Why, by now
Your arrows practically know their own way to the target
And feel less at home in their quiver than in me.

Our native soil draws all of us, by I know not what sweetness, and never allows us to forget.

or that writing a poem you can read to no one
is like dancing in the dark.