Tacitus Quotes
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Crime, once exposed, has no refuge but in audacity.
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No one would have doubted his ability to reign had he never been emperor.
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Indeed, the crowning proof of their valour and their strength is that they keep up their superiority without harm to others.
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Old things are always in good repute, present things in disfavor.
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Great empires are not maintained by timidity.
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Men are more ready to repay an injury than a benefit, because gratitude is a burden and revenge a pleasure.
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Abuse if you slight it, will gradually die away; but if you show yourself irritated, you will be thought to have deserved it.
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The sciences throw an inexpressible grace over our compositions, even where they are not immediately concerned; as their effects are discernible where we least expect to find them.
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When men are full of envy they disparage everything, whether it be good or bad.
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A bad peace is even worse than war.
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Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
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In a state where corruption abounds, laws must be very numerous.
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Et maiores vestros et posteros cogitate.
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We see many who are struggling against adversity who are happy, and more although abounding in wealth, who are wretched.
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All enterprises that are entered into with indiscreet zeal may be pursued with great vigor at first, but are sure to collapse in the end.
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Cruelty is fed, not weakened, by tears.
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He (Tiberius) was wont to mock at the arts of physicians, and at those who, after thirty years of age, needed counsel as to what was good or bad for their bodies.
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The Germans themselves I should regard as aboriginal, and not mixed at all with other races through immigration or intercourse. For in former times, it was not by land but on shipboard that those who sought to emigrate would arrive; and the boundless and, so to speak, hostile ocean beyond us,is seldom entered by a sail from our world.
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Flattery labors under the odious charge of servility.
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No one in Germany laughs at vice, nor do they call it the fashion to corrupt and to be corrupted.
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On the whole,one would say that their strength is in their infantry, which fights along with the cavalry; admirably adapted to the action of the latter is the swiftness of certain foot soldiers, who are picked from the entire youth of their country, and stationed in front of the line.
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Those in supreme power always suspect and hate their next heir.
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War will of itself discover and lay open the hidden and rankling wounds of the victorious party.
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…ibi boni mores valent quam alibi bonae leges. 2