Tacitus Quotes
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None grieve so ostentatiously as those who rejoice most in heart.
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The wicked find it easier to coalesce for seditious purposes than for concord in peace.
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Style, like the human body, is specially beautiful when, so to say, the veins are not prominent, and the bones cannot be counted, but when a healthy and sound blood fills the limbs, and shows itself in the muscles, and the very sinews become beautiful under a ruddy glow and graceful outline.
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That cannot be safe which is not honourable.
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By punishing men of talent we confirm their authority.
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The word liberty has been falsely used by persons who, being degenerately profligate in private life, and mischievous in public, had no hope left but in fomenting discord.
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They have plundered the world, stripping naked the land in their hunger… they are driven by greed, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor… They ravage, they slaughter, they seize by false pretenses, and all of this they hail as the construction of empire. And when in their wake nothing remains but a desert, they call that peace.
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It is a part of the nature of man to resist compulsion.
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Keen at the start, but careless at the end.
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Benefits received are a delight to us as long as we think we can requite them; when that possibility is far exceeded, they are repaid with hatred instead of gratitude.
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Following Emporer Nero's command, "Let the Christians be exterminated!:" . . . they [the Christians] were made the subjects of sport; they were covered with the hides of wild beasts and worried to death by dogs, or nailed to crosses or set fire to, and when the day waned, burned to serve for the evening lights.
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What is today supported by precedents will hereafter become a precedent.
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Every great example of punishment has in it some injustice, but the suffering individual is compensated by the public good.
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Power is more safely retained by cautious than by severe councils.
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It is of eloquence as of a flame; it requires matter to feed it, and motion to excite it; and it brightens as it burns.
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Whatever is unknown is magnified.
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Some might consider him as too fond of fame; for the desire for glory clings even to the best men longer than any other passion.
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In all things there is a kind of law of cycles.
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They terrify lest they should fear.
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People flatter us because they can depend upon our credulity.
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The principal office of history I take to be this: to prevent virtuous actions from being forgotten, and that evil words and deeds should fear an infamous reputation with posterity.
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Secure against the designs of men, secure against the malignity of the Gods, they have accomplished a thing of infinite difficulty; that to them nothing remains even to be wished.
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Who the first inhabitants of Britain were, whether natives or immigrants, remains obscure; one must remember we are dealing with barbarians.
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The most seditious is the most cowardly.