Cato The Younger Quotes

The cabbage surpasses all other vegetables. If, at a banquet, you wish to dine a lot and enjoy your dinner, then eat as much cabbage as you wish, seasoned with vinegar, before dinner, and likewise after dinner eat some half-dozen leaves. It will make you feel as if you had not eaten, and you can drink as much as you like.

Some have said that it is not the business of private men to meddle with government
a bold and dishonest saying, which is fit to come from no mouth but that of a tyrant or a slave. To say that private men have nothing to do with government is to say that private men have nothing to do with their own happiness or misery; that people ought not to concern themselves whether they be naked or clothed, fed or starved, deceived or instructed, protected or destroyed.

By Liberty I understand the Power which every Man has over his own Actions, and his Right to enjoy the Fruits of his Labour, Art, and Industry, as far as by it he hurts not the Society, or any Members of it, by taking from any Member, or by hindering him from enjoying what he himself enjoys. The Fruits of a Man's honest Industry are the just Rewards of it, ascertained to him by natural and eternal Equity, as is his Title to use them in the Manner which he thinks fit: And thus, with the above Limitations, every Man is sole Lord and Arbitrer of his own private Actions and Property.

It is remarkable that men, when they differ in what they think considerable, will be apt to differ in almost everything else; their difference begets contradiction; contradiction begets heat; heat quickly rises into resentment, rage, and ill-will; thus they differ in affections, as they differ in judgment.

For some people there is no comfort without pain. Thus; we define salvation through suffering. Hence, why we choose people who we know aren't right for ourselves.

A honest man is seldom a vagrant.

Consider in silence whatever any one says: speech both conceals and reveals the inner soul of man.

Wise men are more dependent on fools than fools on wise men.

Don't promise twice what you can do at once.

I think the first wisdom is to restrain the tongue.

I would not be beholden to a tyrant, for his acts of tyranny. For it is but usurpation in him to save, as their rightful lord, the lives of men over whom he has no title to reign.

In conversation avoid the extremes of forwardness and reserve.

Bitter are the roots of study, but how sweet their fruit.

The primary virtue is: hold your tongue; who knows how to keep quiet is close to God.

I will begin to speak, when I have that to say which had not better be unsaid.

Blessed be they as virtuous, who when they feel their virile members swollen with lust, visit a brothel rather than grind at some husband's private mill.

Never travel by sea when you can go by land.

Flee sloth; for the indolence of the soul is the decay of the body.

Speak briefly and to the point.

In doing nothing men learn to do evil.