Tacitus Quotes
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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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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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Men are more ready to repay an injury than a benefit, because gratitude is a burden and revenge a pleasure.
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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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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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When men are full of envy they disparage everything, whether it be good or bad.
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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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Et maiores vestros et posteros cogitate.
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In a state where corruption abounds, laws must be very numerous.
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Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
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A bad peace is even worse than war.
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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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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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Flattery labors under the odious charge of servility.
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Cruelty is fed, not weakened, by tears.
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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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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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Those in supreme power always suspect and hate their next heir.
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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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Even the bravest men are frightened by sudden terrors.
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…ibi boni mores valent quam alibi bonae leges. 2
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War will of itself discover and lay open the hidden and rankling wounds of the victorious party.