“I can imagine no greater misfortune for a cultured people than to see in the hands of the rulers not only the civil, but also the religious power.”

Oh, this age! How tasteless and ill bred it is!

Every one has his faults: but we do not see the wallet on our own backs.

What a woman says to an eager lover, write it on running water, write it on air.

It is difficult to lay aside a confirmed passion.

The vows that woman makes to her fond lover are only fit to be written on air or on the swiftly passing stream.

Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love. Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus

I hate and love. You ask, perhaps, how can that be? I know not, but I feel the agony.

It is difficult to suddenly give up a long love. Difficile est longum subito deponere amorem

Give up wanting to deserve any thanks from anyone, or thinking anybody can be grateful.

Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then a thousand more.

Now Spring restores the balmy heat, now Zephyr’s sweet breezes calm the rage of the equinoctial sky.

I hate and I love, and who can tell me why?

So a maiden, whilst she remains untouched, so long is she dear to her own; when she has lost her chaste flower with sullied body, she remains neither lovely to boys nor dear to girls.

For the godly poet must be chaste himself, but there is no need for his verses to be so.

Who now travels that dark path from whose bourne they say no one returns. [Lat., Qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum Illue unde negant redire quemquam.]

I write of youth, of love, and have access by these to sing of cleanly wantonness.

They make solitude, which they call peace.

In the 1960s, the civil rights movement was about getting to know your culture, your history. I know all about my history.

Atheists have just as much civil right to teach atheism as Christians have to teach Christianity; agnostics have just as much right to teach agnosticism as Christians have to teach their religion.

What’s so civil about war anyway?

Civil disobedience has an honourable history, and when the urgency and moral clarity cross a certain threshold, then I think that civil disobedience is quite understandable, and it has a role to play.

We’ve talked more about civil rights after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than we talked about it before 1964.

We have to put a stop to the idea that it is a part of everybody’s civil rights to say whatever he pleases.

There’s a crying need for civility across the board. We need to and will come together in the name of Jesus.