Cato Quotes

I would much rather have men ask why I have no statue than why I have one. ~ Marcus Porcius Cato

Where's your boyfriend, District 12? Still hanging on?" She asks.
Well, as long as we're talking I'm alive. "He's out there now. Hunting Cato," I snarl at her. Then I scream at the top of my lungs. "Peeta!"
Clove jams her fist into my windpipe, very effectively cutting off my voice. But her head's whipping from side to side, and I know for a moment she's at least considering I'm telling the truth. Since no Peeta appears to save me, she turns back to me.
"Liar," she says with a grin. "He's nearly dead. Cato knows where he cut him. You've probably got him strapped up in some tree while you try to keep his heart going. What's in the pretty little backpack? That medicine for Lover Boy? Too bad he'll never get it. ~ Suzanne Collins

The agricultural population, says Cato, produces the bravest men, the most valiant soldiers, and a class of citizens the least given of all too evil designs. ~ Pliny The Elder

I look down from the branch I'm perched on. The Careers look murderous. Now I smile.'How have things been with you?' I ask sweetly. ~ Suzanne Collins

In conversation avoid the extremes of forwardness and reserve. ~ Cato The Younger

The worst ruler is one who cannot rule himself. ~ Cato The Elder

Clove!" Cato's voice is much nearer now. I can tell by the pain in it that he sees her on the ground.
"You better run now, Fire Girl," says Thresh.
I don't need to be told twice. I flip over and my feet dig into the hard-packed earth as I run away from Thresh and Clove and the sound of Cato's voice. Only when I reach the woods do I turn back for an instant. Thresh and both large backpacks are vanishing over the edge of the plain into the area I've never seen. Cato kneels beside Clove, spear in hand, begging her to stay with him. In a moment, he will realize it's futile, she can't be saved. ~ Suzanne Collins

The well-known old remark of Cato, who used to wonder how two soothsayers could look one another in the face without laughing. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

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

You see, nobody cares about me except you. You don't know what that's like. You've always had people who cared. You've always had people. I've never had anybody. No wonder I feel frustrated. ~ Iris Murdoch

Bitter are the roots of study, but how sweet their fruit. ~ Cato The Younger

I was born, slipping on a symphony of broken melancholy; created of pencils and crayons; i was not supposed to be this way. i guess i am a "disappointment". i paint and draw. i like to write poetry. The things I excel at could fit inside my shoe." Excerpt from the poem,"Pain"written in 1995, by E.H. Cato(my maiden name) featured in Volume 2 of the Rantings & Ravings Series, 2013. ~ Emily H. Sturgill

His heart ached in such a familiar way, and the very familiarity of it pained him. ~ Iris Murdoch

It is a hard matter, my fellow citizens, to argue with the belly, since it has no ears. ~ Marcus Porcius Cato

The public has more interest in the punishment of an injury than he who receives it. ~ Cato The Elder

Cessation of work is not accompanied by cessation of expenses ~ Cato The Elder

A honest man is seldom a vagrant. ~ Cato The Younger

It is a hard matter to save a city in which a fish sells for more than an ox. ~ Cato The Elder

Wise men are more dependent on fools than fools on wise men. ~ Cato The Younger

Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise. ~ Cato The Elder

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. ~ Cato The Younger

When we kill a word, it's akin to killing off the dodo bird. Nothing can replace it, and it's impossible to know the scope of the loss." The ~ Beth Cato

He (Cato) never gave his opinion in the Senate upon any other point whatever, without adding these words, "And, in my opinion Carthage should be destroyed." ["Delenda est Carthago."] ~ Plutarch

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. ~ Cato The Younger

I prefer to do right and get no thanks than to do wrong and receive no punishment. ~ Cato The Elder

Things external to her may have their own weight and dimension: but within inside us she gives them such measures as she wills: death is terrifying to Cicero, desirable to Cato, indifferent to Socrates. Health, consciousness, authority, knowledge, beauty and their opposites doff their garments as they enter the soul and receive new vestments, coloured with qualities of her own choosing: brown or green; light or dark; bitter or sweet, deep or shallow, as it pleases each of the individual souls, who have not agreed together on the truth of their practices, rules or ideas. Each soul is Queen in her own state. So let us no longer seek excuses from the external qualities of anything, the responsibility lies within ourselves. Our good or our bad depends on us alone. So let us make our offertories and our vows to ourselves not to Fortune: she has no power over our behaviour, on the contrary our souls drag Fortune in their train and mould her to their own idea. ~ Michel De Montaigne

Buy not what you want, but what you have need of; what you do not want is dear at a farthing. ~ Cato The Elder

Never travel by sea when you can go by land. ~ Cato The Younger

But who are they that for no other reason but that they were weary of life have hastened their own fate? Were they not the next neighbors to wisdom? among whom, to say nothing of Diogenes, Xenocrates, Cato, Cassius, Brutus, that wise man Chiron, being offered immortality, chose rather to die than be troubled with the same thing always. ~ Erasmus

The Koch brothers tend to give to right-leaning and libertarian causes. Koch money was instrumental, for example, in founding the Cato Institute and the Libertarian Party. ~ Donald Luskin

You never speak about yourself without loss. Your self-condemnation is always accredited, your self-praise discredited. There may be some people of my temperament, I who learn better by contrast than by example, and by flight than by pursuit. This was the sort of teaching that Cato the Elder had in view when he said that the wise have more to learn from the fools than the fools from the wise; and also that ancient lyre player who, Pausanias tells us, was accustomed to force his pupils to go hear a bad musician who lived across the way, where they might learn to hate his discords and false measures. ~ Michel De Montaigne

In his History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides adduces a change in language as a major factor in Athens's descent from dysfunctional democracy through demagoguery into tyranny and anarchy: people began to define things in any way they pleased, he says, and the "normally accepted meaning of words" broke down. In his account of the Catiline crisis in republican Rome, Sallust has Cato the Younger identify the misuse of language - specifically the scission of word and meaning - as the underlying cause of the threat to the state. Society, Cato says, has lost the "vera vocabula rerum," literally, the "true names of things."18 In seventeenth-century England, Thomas Hobbes lived through a civil war he believed had been caused in significant measure by a war of words about religion - spread through the pervasive pamphleteering that printing had made possible - that had fatally weakened the linguistic common ground on which an ordered state depends. ~ Mark John Thompson

Flee sloth; for the indolence of the soul is the decay of the body. ~ Cato The Younger

Commander to teacher. Why not call me Cato the Elder, and really insult me while you're at it? (Julian) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Sine doctrina vita est quasi mortis imago [Without learning, life is but the image of death] ~ Dionysius Cato

If you are ruled by mind you are a king; if by body, a slave. ~ Cato The Elder

You're doing your thing, why can't I do my thing? I must be me even if I suffer for it. ~ Iris Murdoch

Holiness may be found by being in the mere presence of books, without evening parting the pages. ~ Beth Cato

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. ~ Cato The Younger

An incident occurred while Cato was speaking which caused much amusement at his expense. A letter was brought in for Caesar, and Cato immediately accused him of being in touch with the conspirators. He challenged him to read the note out loud. Caesar simply passed it across: it was a love letter from Servilia, Caesar's mistress at the time and Cato's half-sister. Cato threw it back angrily with the words: Take it, you drunken idiot. ~ Anthony Everitt

Those who are serious in ridiculous matters will be ridiculous in serious matters. ~ Cato The Elder

Are you dying?"
Cato lit his cigarette. "It's not acute, perhaps, but we're all dying, Harry. ~ Jo Nesbo

When you have decided to purchase a farm, be careful not to buy rashly; do not spare your visits and be not content with a single tour of inspection. The more you go, the more will the place please you, if it be worth your attention. Give heed to the appearance of the neighbourhood, - a flourishing country should show its prosperity. When you go in, look about, so that, when needs be, you can find your way out. ~ Cato The Elder

Tis sometimes the height of wisdom to feign stupidity. ~ Cato The Elder

He who fears death has already lost the life he covets. ~ Cato The Elder

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. ~ Cato The Younger

In doing nothing men learn to do evil. ~ Cato The Younger

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. ~ Cato The Younger

East of my bean-field, across the road, lived Cato Ingraham, slave of Duncan Ingraham, Esquire, gentleman, of Concord village, whobuilt his slave a house, and gave him permission to live in Walden Woods;MCato, not Uticensis, but Concordiensis. Some say that he was a Guinea Negro. There are a few who remember his little patch among the walnuts, which he let grow up till he should be old and need them; but a younger and whiter speculator got them at last. He too, however, occupies an equally narrow house at present. ~ Henry David Thoreau

In the past men were handsome and great (now they are children and dwarfs), but this is merely one of the many facts that demonstrate the disaster of an aging world. The young no longer want to study anything, learning is in decline, the whole world walks on its head, blind men lead others equally blind and cause them to plunge into the abyss, birds leave the nest before they can fly, the jackass plays the lyre, oxen dance. Mary no longer loves the contemplative life and Martha no longer loves the active life, Leah is sterile, Rachel has a carnal eye, Cato visits brothels, Lucretius becomes a woman. Everything is on the wrong path. In those days, thank God, I acquired from my master the desire to learn and a sense of the straight way, which remains even when the path is tortuous. ~ Umberto Eco

Tell her I was young once and star-bright
Who am now invisible . . . ~ Iris Murdoch

Did you really think we wouldn't fight back? That we'd just wallow here until the Unified Pacific decided to kill us off?" His voice was soft, his words sending a chill through her. No, she wanted to say, but the truth was, she had never really thought much about Chinese resistance before, even with Mr. Sakaguchi's frequent observations on the subject. After all, she wasn't one of the elite, one of the persecutors of the Chinese. She was a dark-skinned woman who didn't even know where her father came from, why she looked as she did. Ingrid always felt that she and Lee were bound in friendship, and because of that, their differences didn't matter. "I don't know," she said in a whisper, feeling like a fool. Like she'd been a fool for years. ~ Beth Cato

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. ~ Cato The Younger

You think I hate men. I guess I do, although some of my best friends...I don't like this position. I mistrust generalized hatred. I feel like one of those twelfth century monks raving on about how evil women are and how they must cover themselves up completely when they go out lest they lead men into evil thoughts. The assumption that the men are the ones who matter, and that the women exist only in relation to them, is so silent and underrunning that ever we never picked it up until recently. But after all, look at what we read. I read Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and Wittgenstein and Freud and Erikson; I read de Montherlant and Joyce and Lawrence and sillier people like Miller and Mailer and Roth and Philip Wylie. I read the Bible and Greek myths and didn't question why all later redactions relegated Gaea-Tellus and Lilith to a footnote and made Saturn the creator of the world. I read or read about, without much question, the Hindus and the Jews, Pythagoras and Aristotle, Seneca, Cato, St.Paul, Luther, Sam Johnson, Rousseau, Swift...well, you understand. For years I didn't take it personally.
So now it is difficult for me to call others bigots when I am one myself. I tell people at once, to warn them, that I suffer from deformation of character. But the truth is I am sick unto death of four thousand years of males telling me how rotten my sex is. Especially it makes me sick when I look around and see such rotten men and such magnificent women, all of whom have a sneaking ~ Marilyn French

Be firm or mild as the occasion may require. ~ Cato The Elder

My contact with [Cato] was strange. They're ideologues, like Trotskyites. All questions must be seen and solved within the true faith of libertarianism, the idea of minimal government. And like Trotskyites, the guys from Cato can talk you to death. ~ Nat Hentoff

We'll earn it all back today," I say, and we both plow into our plates. Even cold, it's one of the things I've ever tasted. I abandon my fork and scrape up the last dabs of gravy with my fingers. "I can feel Effie trinket shuddering at my manners."
"Hey, Effie, watch this!" says Peeta. He tosses his fork over his shoulder and literally licks his plate his plate clean with his tongue making loud, satisfied sounds. Then he blows a kiss to her in general, and calls, "We miss you, Effie!"
I cover his hand with my mouth. But I am laughing.
"Stop! Cato could be right outside our cave."
He grabs my hand away."What do I care. I've got you to protect me now," says Peeta, pulling me to him.
"Come on," I say in exasperation, extricating myself from his grasp but not before he gets another kiss. ~ Suzanne Collins

I want you to be able to see me, and as my love for you is so much of me (all of me, making me more than myself) then you must see that too. ~ Iris Murdoch

Suffer women once to arrive at an equality with you, and they will from that moment become your superiors. ~ Cato The Elder

I've somehow run myself into hell. There must be many entrances. ~ Iris Murdoch

Anger so clouds the mind that it cannot perceive the truth. ~ Cato The Elder

Speech is the gift of all, but the thought of few. ~ Cato The Elder

Cato used to assert that wise men profited more by fools than fools by wise men; for that wise men avoided the faults of fools, but that fools would not imitate the good examples of wise men. ~ Plutarch

For he (Cato) gives his opinion as if he were in Plato's Republic, not in Romulus' cesspool. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

The hero saves us. Praise the hero! Now, who will save us from the hero? ~ Cato The Elder

I can pardon everybody's mistakes except my own. ~ Cato The Elder

What should a wise person do when given a blow? Same as Cato when he was attacked; not fire up or revenge the insult., or even return the blow, but simply ignore it. ~ Seneca The Younger

I have been ... moved to wonder whether my job is a job or a racket, whether economists, and particularly economic theorists, may not be in the position that Cicero, citing Cato, ascribed to the augurs of Rome-that they should cover their faces or burst into laugher when they met on the street. ~ Frank Knight

Writing again, he stressed that the events of war are always uncertain. Then, paraphrasing a favorite line from the popular play Cato by Joseph Addison - a line that General Washington, too, would often call upon - Adams told her, We cannot insure success, but we can deserve it. ~ David McCullough

We cannot control the evil tongues of others; but a good life enables us to disregard them. ~ Cato The Elder

The dawn is overcast, the morning lowers, And heavily in clouds brings on the day, The great, the important day, big with the fate Of Cato and of Rome. ~ Joseph Addison

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

I can't tell you - oh I can't tell you - how awful - how sort of unlivable - everything is now - like a great black wall in front of me - Something's got to smash. ~ Iris Murdoch

When confronted by a hungry wolf, it is unwise to goad the beast, as Cato would have us do. But it is equally unwise to imagine the snarling animal a friend and offer your hand, as Pompey does." "Perhaps you would have us climb a tree! ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one. ~ Marcus Porcius Cato

Andromeda said a quick good-bye to Lailah and Cato, was startled when her mother hugged her close and whispered, Fly free, my daughter. Be what I could never be and leave the cage forever. ~ Nalini Singh

I'm not their slave," the man mutters.
"I am," I say. "That's why I killed Cato ... and he killed Thresh ... and he killed Clove ... and she tried to kill me. It just goes around and around, and who wins? Not us. Not the districts. Always the capitol. But I'm tired of being a piece in their games. ~ Suzanne Collins

Conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute have criticized Bush for his big increases in spending, which far exceed those of the Clinton era. ~ Jim Cooper

Farming, if you do one thing late, you will be late in all your work. ~ Cato The Elder

Of this last kind of comparisons is that quoted from the elder Cato, who, when asked what was the most profitable thing to be done on an estate, replied, "To feed cattle well." "What second best?" "To feed cattle moderately well." "What third best?" "To feed cattle, though but poorly." "What fourth best?" "To plough the land." And when he who had made these inquiries asked, "What is to be said of making profit by usury?" Cato replied, "What is to be said of making profit by murder? ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

A slave, Marcus Cato said, should be working when he is not sleeping. It does not matter whether his work is needed or not, he must work, because work in itself is good - for slaves, at least. This sentiment still survives, and it has piled up mountains of useless drudgery. ~ George Orwell

Like Cato, give his little senate laws, and sit attentive to his own applause. ~ Alexander Pope

We are never done, then, with conscience. Make up your mind what to do with it, Brutus; make up your mind what to do with it, Cato. It is without end, being God. We throw into this bottomless pit a lifetime of labor, we throw into it our fortune, we throw into it our success, we throw into it our liberty or our country, we throw into it our well-being, we throw into it our repose, we throw into it our joy. More! More! More! Empty the vessel! Tip out the urn! We are forced in the end to throw in our hearts. Somewhere in the mists of the old underworld there is a barrel like that. ~ Victor Hugo

I think the first wisdom is to restrain the tongue. ~ Cato The Younger

We are never done with conscience. Choose your course by it, Brutus; Choose your course by it, Cato. It is bottomless, being God. We cast in to this pit the labor of our whole lives, we cast in our liberty or our country, we cast in our well-being, we cast in our repose, we cast in our happiness. More! more! more! Empty the vase! turn out the urn! We must at last cast in our heart. ~ Victor Hugo

Go hide," Jonas said softly. "Stay safe. You're free now. When this is over, no matter what happens, find someone loyal to Cato and say you need Nathanial's tracker off of you. I have plenty of money and everything you could possibly need. Find someone from-" Emmy slapped him across the face. Red blotches appeared on her cheeks. "Don't be daft. I'm going to kill that sonuvabitch Nathanial and earn my place among your people. Lead the way to this Sasha." "You don't know how to-" Another slap cut Jonas off. "Fair enough."

-Jonas & Emmy ~ K.F. Breene

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

He who steals from a citizen," said Cato, "ends his days in fetters and chains; but he who steals from the community ends them in purple and gold."17 ~ Will Durant

From lightest words sometimes the direst quarrel springs. ~ Cato The Elder

Ignorance didn't feel like bliss. It felt like stupidity, and she hated it. "That ~ Beth Cato

Cato, being scurrilously treated by a low and vicious fellow, quietly said to him, "A contest between us is very unequal, for thou canst bear ill language with ease, and return it with pleasure; but to me it is unusual to hear, and disagreeable to speak it." There are none more abusive to others than they that lie most open to it themselves; but the humor goes round, and he that laughs at me today will have somebody to laugh at him tomorrow. ~ Seneca The Younger

Cato requested old men not to add the disgrace of wickedness to old age, which was accompanied with many other evils. ~ Plutarch

Ingrid stared at him and again wondered about the boy she had loved and nurtured for the past five years. She always knew he was Chinese, of course, but that was an entirely different thing from understanding what it was to be Chinese. Lee ~ Beth Cato

He stopped moving among the shelves. She stopped as well and scanned the books around her. 'Such a glorious perfume, these old books. ~ Beth Cato

Patience is the greatest of all virtues. ~ Cato The Elder

Wise men profit more by fools than fools by wise men. ~ Marcus Porcius Cato

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. ~ Cato The Younger

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. ~ Herman Melville

A clever learns more from fool than fools learn from the wise. ~ Cato The Elder

An angry man opens his mouth and shuts his eyes. ~ Cato The Elder