Petronius > Quotes

“Can't you see that I'm only advising you to beg yourself not to be so dumb?”
― Petronius, The Satyricon

“We trained hard—but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we were reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while actually producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.”
― Petronius Arbiter

“Nothing is falser than people's preconceptions and ready-made opinions; nothing is sillier than their sham morality...”
― Petronius, The Satyricon

“Everyone will find what he's looking for. Nothing pleases everyone: this man gathers thorns, that one roses.”
― Petronius, The Satyricon

“Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Σίβυλλα τί θέλεις; respondebat illa: ἀποθανεῖν θέλω.


For with my own eyes I saw Sibyl hanging in a jar, and when the young boys asked her, 'Sibyl, what do you want?', she replied, 'I want to die.”
― Petronius

“I believe that school makes complete fools of our young men, because they see and hear nothing of ordinary life there”
― Petronius

“What power has law where only money rules?”
― Petronius

“The imagination will not perform until it has been flooded by a vast torrent of reading. - 27-66 AD”
― Petronius

“Serva me, servabo te”
― Petronius Arbiter

“I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl of Cumae hanging in a jar, and when the boys said to her, Sibyl, what do you want? she replied I want to die.”
― Petronius, The Satyricon and The Apocolocyntosis of the Divine Claudius

“Outward looks are not enough,
Beauty is not common stuff-
Of merriment it is compact,
Playful grace in every act,
Witty laughter, laughing wit:
These are things that go with it,
These surpass the simple graces
In beautiful and silly faces.
Art is beauty; and I say:
Take the lovely fool away!-
If she strips from foot to head
And doesn't ask me into bed.”
― Petronius

“I said everything that a painful swelling in one's libido tells one to say.”
― Petronius, The Satyricon

“No man on earth may look on forbidden things as you have done and escape punishment. Especially here, a land so infested with divinity that one might meet a god more easily than a man.”
― Petronius Arbiter, The Satyricon

“After all, I was once like you are, but being the right sort I got where I am.”
― Petronius, The Satyricon

“utres inflati ambulamus. minoris quam muscae sumus, muscae tamen aliquam uirtutem habent, nos non pluris sumus quam bullae.”
― Petronius Arbiter, The Satyricon

“I myself have seen with my own eyes the sybil hanging in a bottle at Cumae. And when the little boys asked her "Sybil, what do you want?" she said, "I want to die.”
― the Satyricon of Petronius

“One good turns deserve another”
― Petronius

“What the Gods want happens soon”
― Petronius

“Wine there! Wine and dice! Tomorrow's fears shall fools alone benumb! By the ear Death pulls me. 'Live!' he whispers softly, 'Live! I come.”
― Petronius, The Satyricon

“The trader trusts his fortune to the sea and takes his gains,
     The warrior, for his deeds, is girt with gold;
The wily sycophant lies drunk on purple counterpanes,
     Young wives must pay debauchees or they're cold.
But solitary, shivering, in tatters Genius stands
     Invoking a neglected art, for succor at its hands.”
― Petronius, The Satyricon

“All those who are left legacies in my will…will obtain my bequests only on one condition, that they cut my body in pieces and eat it before the eyes of the citizens…You must merely shield your eyes, and imagine that what you have swallowed is not human entrails but ten million sesterces.”
― Petronius, The Satyricon

“It's the old headpiece that makes a man, the rest is all rubbish.”
― Petronius, The Satyricon

“Es gibt nichts Verfehlteres als die unsinnige Voreingenommenheit der Menschen und nichts Dümmeres als gleisnerische Sittenstrenge.”
― Petronius Arbiter, The Satyricon

“So the starry sky turns round like a millstone, always bringing some trouble, and men being born or dying.”
― Petronius, The Satyricon

“Nemo nostrum solide natus est.”
― Petronius, The Satyricon

“We trained hard . . . but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized.

I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.

Gaius Petronius AD 66”
― Gaius Petronius

“Just as in dicing, Fortune smiles or lowers; When good luck beckons, then your friend his gleeful service gives But basely flies when ruin o'er you towers.”
― Petronius Arbiter, The Satyricon

“Every man shall find his own desire; there is no one thing which pleases all: one man gathers thorns and another roses.”
― Petronius

“Heartened up by this story, I began to draw upon his more comprehensive knowledge as to the ages of the pictures and as to certain of the stories connected with them, upon which I was not clear; and I likewise inquired into the causes of the decadence of the present age, in which the most refined arts had perished, and among them painting, which had not left even the faintest trace of itself behind. "Greed of money," he replied, "has brought about these unaccountable changes. In the good old times, when virtue was her own reward, the fine arts flourished, and there was the keenest rivalry among men for fear that anything which could be of benefit to future generations should remain long undiscovered. Then it was that Democritus expressed the juices of all plants and spent his whole life in experiments, in order that no curative property should lurk unknown in stone or shrub. That he might understand the movements of heaven and the stars, Eudoxus grew old upon the summit of a lofty mountain: three times did Chrysippus purge his brain with hellebore, that his faculties might be equal to invention. Turn to the sculptors if you will; Lysippus perished from hunger while in profound meditation upon the lines of a single statue, and Myron, who almost embodied the souls of men and beasts in bronze, could not find an heir. And we, sodden with wine and women, cannot even appreciate the arts already practiced, we only criticise the past! We learn only vice, and teach it, too. What has become of logic? of astronomy? Where is the exquisite road to wisdom? Who even goes into a temple to make a vow, that he may achieve eloquence or bathe in the fountain of wisdom? And they do not pray for good health and a sound mind; before they even set foot upon the threshold of the temple, one promises a gift if only he may bury a rich relative; another, if he can but dig up a treasure, and still another, if he is permitted to amass thirty millions of sesterces in safety! The Senate itself, the exponent of all that should be right and just, is in the habit of promising a thousand pounds of gold to the capitol, and that no one may question the propriety of praying for money, it even decorates Jupiter himself with spoils'. Do not hesitate, therefore, at expressing your surprise at the deterioration of painting, since, by all the gods and men alike, a lump of gold is held to be more beautiful than anything ever created by those crazy little Greek fellows, Apelles and Phydias!”
― Petronius, The Satyricon

“(It has been so long; since I promised you the story of my adventures, that I have decided to make good my word today; and, seeing that we have thus fortunately met, not to discuss scientific matters alone, but also to enliven our jolly conversation with witty stories.”
― Petronius, The Satyricon — Complete