You importune me, Tucca, to present you with my books. I shall not do so; for you want to sell, not to read, them.
MARTIALThat which prevents disagreeable flies from feeding on your repast, was once the proud tail of a splendid bird.
More Martial Quotes
-
-
If you want him to mourn, you had best leave him nothing.
MARTIAL -
If fame comes after death, I’m in no hurry for it.
MARTIAL -
The present joys of life we doubly taste, By looking back with pleasure to the past.
MARTIAL -
Be not too thick with anybody; your joys will be fewer, and so will pains.
MARTIAL -
Of no day can the retrospect cause pain to a good man.
MARTIAL -
Virtue extends our days: he lives two lives who relives his past with pleasure.
MARTIAL -
There is no glory in outstripping donkeys.
MARTIAL -
You praise, in three hundred verses, Sabellus, the baths of Ponticus, who gives such excellent dinners. You wish to dine, Sabellus, not to bathe.
MARTIAL -
She grieves sincerely who grieves unseen.
MARTIAL -
They let out on hire their passions and eloquence. [Referring to lawyers.]
MARTIAL -
I seem to you cruel and too much addicted to gluttony, when I beat my cook for sending up a bad dinner. If that appears to you too trifling a cause, say for what cause you would have a cook flogged.
MARTIAL -
Spare the person but lash the vice.
MARTIAL -
He who writes distichs, wishes, I suppose, to please by brevity. But, tell me, of what avail is their brevity, when there is a whose book full of them?
MARTIAL -
I do not like the man who squanders life for fame; give me the man who living makes a name.
MARTIAL -
Fortune gives too much to many, enough to none.
MARTIAL