Marcus Tullius Cicero - Select Quotes

Of all the gifts of the gods to the human race, philosophy is the richest, the most beautiful, the most exalted.
~ in De Legibus

Philosophy is the best medicine for the mind.

History, the evidence of time, the light of truth, the life of memory, the directress of life, the herald of antiquity, committed to immortality.
~ in De Oratore

You might as well take the sun out of the sky as friendship from life: for the immortal gods have given us nothing better or more delightful.
~ in On Friendship

Fire and water are not of more universal use than friendship.
~ in On Friendship

If you take away emotion, what difference remains I don’t say between a man and a beast, but between a man and a stone or a log of wood, or anything else of that kind.
~ in On Friendship

The more laws the less justice.
~ in De Officiis

Men decide many more problems by hate, love, lust, sorrow, joy, hope, fear, illusion or some similar emotions, than by reason or authority or any legal standards, or legal precedents, or law.
~ in De Oratore

In fact, the whole passion ordinarily termed love (and heaven help me if I can think of any other term to apply to it) is of such exceeding triviality that I see nothing that I think comparable to it.

Thought is free.
~ in Pro Milone

Pleasure has no fellowship with virtue.
~ in De Senectute

For clearly death is neglibible, if it utterly annihilates the soul, or even desirable, if it conducts the soul to some place where it is to live for ever. Surely no other alternative can be found. What, then, shall I fear, if after death I am destined to be either not unhappy or happy.
~ in De Senectute

What can be more noble than the government of the state by virtue? For then the man who rules others is not himself a slave to any passion, but has already acquired for himself all those qualities to which he is training and summoning his fellows. such a man imposes no laws upon th epopple that he does not obey himself, but puts his own life before his fellow-citizens as their law.
~ Cicero, in Republic

Virtue is its own reward.

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.

The higher we are placed, the more humbly should we walk.