Tacitus Quotes
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Noble character is best appreciated in those ages in which it can most readily develop.
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Necessity reforms the poor, and satiety reforms the rich.
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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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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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Great empires are not maintained by timidity.
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Old things are always in good repute, present things in disfavor.
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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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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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Et maiores vestros et posteros cogitate.
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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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Flattery labors under the odious charge of servility.
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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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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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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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…ibi boni mores valent quam alibi bonae leges. 2
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Even the bravest men are frightened by sudden terrors.
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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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Pacem sine dubio post haec, verum cruentam.