“Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these.”
― Ovid
“Chance is always powerful. Let your hook be always cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish.”
― Ovid
“Dripping water hollows out stone, not through force but through persistence.”
― Ovid
“Perfer et obdura, dolor hic tibi proderit olim. (Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you.)”
― Ovid
“I grabbed a pile of dust, and holding it up, foolishly asked for as many birthdays as the grains of dust, I forgot to ask that they be years of youth. ”
― Ovid
“Fas est ab hoste doceri.
One should learn even from one’s enemies.”
― Ovid
“Happy is the man who has broken the chains which hurt the mind, and has given up worrying once and for all.”
“Be patient and tough; one day this pain will be useful to you.”
― Ovid
“Omnia mutantur, nihil interit (everything changes, nothing perishes).”
― Ovid
“I am the poet of the poor, because I was poor when I loved; since I could not give gifts, I gave words.”
― Ovid
“Happy are those who dare courageously to defend what they love.”
― Ovid
“Give me the waters of Lethe that numb the heart, if they exist, I will still not have the power to forget you.”
― Ovid
“I am dragged along by a strange new force. Desire and reason are pulling in different directions. I see the right way and approve it, but follow the wrong.”
― Ovid
“We are ever striving after what is forbidden, and coveting what is denied us.”
― Ovid
“As wave is driven by wave
And each, pursued, pursues the wave ahead,
So time flies on and follows, flies, and follows,
Always, for ever and new. What was before
Is left behind; what never was is now;
And every passing moment is renewed.”
― Ovid
“When he, whoever of the gods it was, had thus arranged in order and resolved that chaotic mass, and reduced it, thus resolved, to cosmic parts, he first moulded the Earth into the form of a mighty ball so that it might be of like form on every side … And, that no region might be without its own forms of animate life, the stars and divine forms occupied the floor of heaven, the sea fell to the shining fishes for their home, Earth received the beasts, and the mobile air the birds … Then Man was born:… though all other animals are prone, and fix their gaze upon the earth, he gave to Man an uplifted face and bade him stand erect and turn his eyes to heaven.”
― Ovid
“Anything cracked will shatter at a touch.”
― Ovid
“Love will enter cloaked in friendship’s name.”
― Ovid
“It’s a kindness that the mind can go where it wishes.”
― Ovid
“A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man’s brow.”
― Ovid
“If you would be loved, be lovable”
― Ovid
“Nothing is stronger than habit.”
― Ovid
“God himself helps those who dare.”
― Ovid
“Every lover is a soldier.”
― Ovid
“Take rest; a field that has rested gives a beautiful crop.”
― Ovid
“Love is the force that leaves you colorless”
― Ovid
“Dignity and love do not blend well, nor do they continue long together. ”
― Ovid
“Saepe creat molles aspera spina rosas” – “Often the prickly thorn produces tender roses”
― Ovid
“Eurydice, dying now a second time, uttered no complaint against her husband. What was there to complain of, but that she had been loved?”
― Ovid
“I flee who chases me and chase who flees me.”
― Ovid
“Happy is the man who has broken the chains which hurt the mind, and has given up worrying once and for all.”
― Ovid
“In our play we reveal what kind of people we are”
― Ovid
“Thus I am not able to exist either with you or without you; and I seem not to know my own wishes.”
― Ovid
“The cause is hidden. The effect is visible to all.”
― Ovid
“All things change; nothing perishes.”
― Ovid
“Barbarus hic ego sum, quia non intelligor illis.
(In this place I am a barbarian, because men do not understand me.)”
― Ovid
“Greatly he failed, but he had greatly dared.”
― Ovid
“Neither can the wave that has passed by be recalled, nor the hour which has passed return again.”
― Ovid
“All right, boy, skewer me. I’ve dropped my defenses,
I’m an easy victim. Why, by now
Your arrows practically know their own way to the target
And feel less at home in their quiver than in me.”
― Ovid
“…et ignotas animum dimittit in artes, naturamque nouat. (to arts unknown he bends his wits, and alters nature.)”
― Ovid
“In the make-up of human beings, intelligence counts for more than our hands, and that is our true strength.”
― Ovid
“And besides, we lovers fear everything”
― Ovid
“Bene vixit, bene qui latuit.”
(To live well is to live concealed.)”
― Ovid, The Tristia of Ovid
tags: life, peace, privacy, secrecy
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“Look at the four-spaced year
That imitates four seasons of our lives;
First Spring, that delicate season, bright with flowers,
Quickening, yet shy, and like a milk-fed child,
Its way unsteady while the countryman
Delights in promise of another year.
Green meadows wake to bloom, frail shoots and grasses,
And then Spring turns to Summer’s hardiness,
The boy to manhood. There’s no time of year
Of greater richness, warmth, and love of living,
New strength untried. And after Summer, Autumn,
First flushes gone, the temperate season here
Midway between quick youth and growing age,
And grey hair glinting when the head turns toward us,
Then senile Winter, bald or with white hair,
Terror in palsy as he walks alone.”
― Ovid
“My soul would sing of metamorphoses.
But since, o gods, you were the source of these
bodies becoming other bodies, breathe
your breath into my book of changes: may
the song I sing be seamless as its way
weaves from the world’s beginning to our day.”
― Ovid
“Someday this pain will be useful to you”
― Ovid
“or that writing a poem you can read to no one
is like dancing in the dark.”
― Ovid
“Our native soil draws all of us, by I know not what sweetness, and never allows us to forget.”
―Ovid
“Brass shines with constant usage, a beautiful dress needs wearing,
Leave a house empty, it rots.”
― Ovid
“It’s right to learn, even from the enemy.”
― Ovid
“When all the other animals, downcast looked upon the earth, he [Prometheus] gave a face raised on high to man, and commanded him to see the sky and raise his high eyes to the stars.”
― Ovid
“Venus of Eryx, from her mountain throne,
Saw Hades and clasped her swift-winged son, and said:
‘Cupid, my child, my warrior, my power,
Take those sure shafts with which you conquer all,
And shoot your speedy arrows to the heart
Of the great god to whom the last lot fell
When the three realms were drawn. Your mastery
Subdues the gods of heaven and even Jove,
Subdues the ocean’s deities and him,
Even him, who rules the ocean’s deities.
Why should Hell lag behind? Why not there too
Extend your mother’s empire and your own….?
Then Cupid, guided by his mother, opened
His quiver of all his thousand arrows
Selected one, the sharpest and the surest,
The arrow most obedient to the bow,
And bent the pliant horn against his knee
And shot the barbed shaft deep in Pluto’s heart.”
― Ovid
“There is a certain pleasure in weeping”
― Ovid