Quotes from Cicero

I do not understand what the man who is happy wants in order to be happier.

He who hangs on the errors of the ignorant multitude, must not be counted among great men.

When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men's [children's] minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind.

The man who backbites an absent friend, nay, who does not stand up for him when another blames him, the man who angles for bursts of laughter and for the repute of a wit, who can invent what he never saw, who cannot keep a secret -- that man is black at heart: mark and avoid him.

Where is there dignity unless there is honesty?

Nature herself has imprinted on the minds of all the idea of God

The welfare of the people is the highest law

To make a mistake is only human; to persist in a mistake is idiotic.

Books: our unfailing companions

The mind becomes accustomed to things by the habitual sight of them, and neither wonders nor inquires about the reasons for things it sees all the time.

Historia magistra vitae est

I would rather be wrong, by God, with Plato than be correct with those men.