Marcus Tullius Cicero Inspirational Quotations

The pursuit, even of the best things, ought to be calm and tranquil.

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.

The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn.

The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.

A man of courage is also full of faith.

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.

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

Glory follows virtue as if it were its shadow.

No one was ever great without some portion of divine inspiration.

Confidence is that feeling by which the mind embarks in great and honorable courses with a sure hope and trust in itself.

This is our special duty, that if anyone specially needs our help, we should give him such help to the utmost of our power.

"I believe that no characteristic is so distinctively human as the sense of indebtedness we feel, not necessarily for a favor received, but even for the slightest evidence of kindness; and there is nothing so boorish, savage, inhuman as to appear to be overwhelmed by a favor, let alone unworthy of it."

The searching-out and thorough investigation of truth ought to be the primary study of man.

Life is nothing without friendship.

Where is there dignity unless there is honesty?

No sane man will dance.

Who doesn't know that the first law of history is not to dare to say anything false, and the second is not to refrain from saying anything true?

The higher our position the more modestly we should behave.

Whatever is done without ostentation, and without the people being witnesses of it, is, in my opinion, most praiseworthy: not that the public eye should be entirely avoided, for good actions desire to be placed in the light; but notwithstanding this, the greatest theater for virtue is conscience.

In nothing do men more nearly approach the gods, than in giving health to men.

The life given us, by nature is short; but the memory of a well-spent life is eternal.

Friendship was given by nature to be an assistant to virtue, not a companion in vice.