Catullus Quotes

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

Let us live and love, nor give a damn what sour old men say.
The sun that sets may rise again, but when our light has sunk into the earth it is gone forever. ~ Catullus

What a woman tells her lover in desire
should be written out on air & running water. ~ Catullus

They loved, and quarreled, and made up, and loved, and fought, and were true to each other and untrue. She made him the happiest man in the whole world and the most wretched, and after a few years she died, and then, when he was thirty, he died, too. But by that time Catullus had invented the love poem. ~ Tom Stoppard

But you shall not escape my iambics. ~ Catullus

Ave Atque Vale
Hail and farewell ~ Catullus

Ah, what is more blessed than to put cares away, when the mind lays by its burden, and tired with labor of far travel we have come to our own home and rest on the couch we longed for? This it is which alone is worth all these toils. ~ Catullus

Better a sparrow, living or dead, than no birdsong at all. ~ Catullus

Through many countries and over many seas
I have come, Brother, to these melancholy rites,
to show this final honour to the dead,
and speak (to what purpose?) to your silent ashes,
since now fate takes you, even you, from me.
Oh, Brother, ripped away from me so cruelly,
now at least take these last offerings, blessed
by the tradition of our parents, gifts to the dead.
Accept, by custom, what a brother's tears drown,
and, for eternity, Brother, 'Hail and Farewell'. ~ Catullus

I hate & love. And if you should ask how I do both,
I couldn't say; but I feel it , and it shivers me. ~ Catullus

But your own tears blind you to mine.
I am not neglectful of friendship,
but we two squat in the same coracle,
we are both swamped by the same stormy waters,
I have not the gifts of a happy man ... Often enough. ~ Catullus

So a maiden, while she remains untouched, remains dear to her own; but when she has lost her chaste flower with sullied body, she remains neither lovely to boys nor dear to girls. ~ Catullus

Genius now and then produces a lucky trifle. We still read the Dove of Anacreon, and Sparrow of Catullus; and a writer naturally pleases himself with a performance which owes nothing to the subject. ~ Samuel Johnson

In perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale. (Forever and ever, brother, hail and farewell.) ~ Catullus

I hate and I love
Why do I, you ask ?
I don't know, but it's happening
and it hurts ~ Catullus

The picture of the bacchante who stands motionless and stares into space must have been well known. Catullus is thinking of her when he tells of the abandoned Ariadne, who follows her faithless lover with sorrowing eyes as she stands on the reedy shore 'like the picture of a maenad.' Indeed, melancholy silence becomes the sign of women who are possessed by Dionysus. […]
Madness dwells in the surge of clanging, shrieking, and pealing sounds, it dwells also in silence. The women who follow Dionysus get their name, maenads, from this madness. Possessed by it, they rush off, whirl madly in circles, or stand still, as if turned to stone. ~ Walter F. Otto

It is difficult to lay aside a confirmed passion. ~ Catullus

I hate and I love. And if you ask me how, I do not know: I only feel it, and I am torn in two. ~ Catullus

Odi et amo; quare fortasse requiris, nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.
(my translation: I hate and I love, you ask why I do this, I do not know, but I feel and I am tormented) ~ Catullus

people coming out of church
conversing about the sermon
sniffing at the autumn air
something in the papers about forces of popular opinion
and values which are unto our nation

what is
holding you back, Catullus?
why don't you go and die?
the stalks of the potato-plants
are rotting fast this year
only October now

this evening away
A boy comes out of the wood,
crossbow on his shoulder ~ Pentti Saarikoski

Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris. Nescio. des fieri sentio et excrucior.

I hate and I love. You may ask, why I do this. I do not know. But I sense that I do and it pains me. ~ Catullus

Away with you, water, destruction of wine! ~ Catullus

...anyone with a secretary knows that what Catullus really wrote was already corrupt by the time it was copied twice... ~ Tom Stoppard

I have lost you, my brother
And your death has ended
The spring season
Of my happiness,
our house is buried with you
And buried the laughter that you taught me.
There are no thoughts of love nor of poems
In my head
Since you died. ~ Catullus

I hate her and i love her. don't ask me why. it's the way i feel, that's all, and it hurts. ~ Catullus, Gaius Valerius

Driven across many nations, across many oceans
I am here, my brother, for this final parting,
to offer at last those gifts which the dead are given
and to speak in vain to your unspeaking ashes,
since bitter fortune forbids you to hear me or answer,
O my wretched brother, so abruptly taken!
But now I must celebrate grief with funeral tributes
offered the dead in the ancient way of the fathers;
accept these presents, wet with my brotherly tears, and
now and forever, my brother, hail and farewell. ~ Catullus Gaius Valerius

Come and let us live my Deare,
Let us love and never feare,
What the sowrest Fathers say:
Brightest Sol that dies to day
Lives againe as blithe to morrow,
But if we darke sons of sorrow
Set; o then, how long a Night
Shuts the Eyes of our short light!
Then let amorous kisses dwell
On our lips, begin and tell
A Thousand, and a Hundred, score
An Hundred, and a Thousand more,
Till another Thousand smother
That, and that wipe of another.
Thus at last when we have numbred
Many a Thousand, many a Hundred;
Wee'l confound the reckoning quite,
And lose our selves in wild delight:
While our joyes so multiply,
As shall mocke the envious eye. ~ Richard Crashaw

Stop wishing to merit anyone's gratitude or thinking that anyone can become grateful. ~ Catullus

We see not our own backs. ~ Catullus

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

My sweetest Lesbia, let us live and love, And though the sager sort our deeds reprove, Let us not weigh them. Heaven's great lamps do dive Into their west, and straight again revive, But soon as once set is our little light, Then must we sleep one ever-during night. See Catullus 200:5. ~ Thomas Campion

I hate and I love. You ask why I do this? I do not know, but I feel and I am tormented. - CATULLUS ~ Kami Garcia

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

Mulier cupido quod dicit amanti, in vento et rapida scribere oportet aqua ((What woman says to fond lover should be written on air or the swift water) ~ Catullus

My mind's sunk so low, Claudia, because of you, wrecked itself on your account so bad already, that I couldn't like you if you were the best of women, -or stop loving you, no matter what you do. ~ Catullus

Why cannot we be delighted with an author, and even feel a predilection for him, without a dislike of others? An admiration of Catullus or Virgil, of Tibullus or Ovid, is never to be heightened by a discharge of bile on Horace. ~ Walter Savage Landor

What woman says to fond lover should be written on air or the swift water.
[Lat., Mulier cupido quod dicit amanti,
In vento et rapida scribere oportet aqua.] ~ Catullus

There is nothing more foolish than a foolish laugh. Risu inepto res ineptior nulla est ~ Catullus

We should live, my Lesbia, and love
And value all the talk of stricter
Old men at a single penny.
Suns can set and rise again;
For us, once our brief light has set,
There's one unending night for sleeping.
Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred,
Then another thousand, then a second hundred,
Then still another thousand, then a hundred;
Then, when we've made many thousands,
We'll muddle them so as not to know
Or lest some villain overlook us
Knowing the total of our kisses.
(Translated by Guy Lee) ~ Catullus

All think what other people think;
All know the man their neighbor knows.
Lord, what would they say
Did their Catullus walk that way? ~ William Butler Yeats

I hate and I love. Why do I do this, you may ask? I do not know, but I feel it, and I am tortured. ~ Catullus

What women say to lovers, you'll agree, One writes on running water or on air. ~ Catullus

When Catullus expresses his love and hate for Lesbia, he is not obviously voicing a wish to rid himself of one or the other of these two sentiments. Not all contradictions resolve into temporal change of belief or desire. ~ Raymond Geuss

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

My lady's sparrow is dead, the sparrow which was my lady's delight ~ Catullus

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

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. ~ Catullus

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