Spare the person but lash the vice.
MARTIALYou praise, in three hundred verses, Sabellus, the baths of Ponticus, who gives such excellent dinners. You wish to dine, Sabellus, not to bathe.
More Martial Quotes
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Some are good, some are middling, the most are bad.
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I wont let a wife lead me to the altar.
MARTIAL -
Red-haired, black-lipped, club-footed, and blink-eyed; if you’re a good man, you’re a wonder!
MARTIAL -
You may envy every one, but no one envies you.
MARTIAL -
You complain, friend Swift, of the length of my epigrams, but you yourself write nothing. Yours are shorter.
MARTIAL -
You’re obstinate, pliant, merry, morose, all at once. For me there’s no living with you, or without you.
MARTIAL -
If I remember right, Aelia, you had four teeth; a cough displaced two, another two more. You can now cough without anxiety all the day long. A third cough can find nothing to do in your mouth.
MARTIAL -
If your slave commits a fault, do not smash his teeth with your fists; give him some of the (hard) biscuit which famous Rhodes has sent you.
MARTIAL -
You should not fear, nor yet should you wish for your last day.
MARTIAL -
Man loves malice, but not against one-eyed men nor the unfortunate, but against the fortunate and proud.
MARTIAL -
Can the fish love the fisherman?
MARTIAL -
It is feeling and force of imagination that make us eloquent.
MARTIAL -
No amount of misfortune will satisfy the man who is not satisfied with reading a hundred epigrams.
MARTIAL -
Nothing is more ill-timed than an ill-timed laugh.
MARTIAL -
It is not he who forms idols in gold or marble that makes them gods, but he who kneels before them.
MARTIAL