Ovid Quotes

Remove but the temptations of leisure, and the bow of Cupid will lose its effect. ~ Ovid

Let love give way to business; give attention to business and you will be safe. ~ Ovid

The gods behold all righteous actions. ~ Ovid

The gods have their own laws.
[Lat., Sunt superis sua jura.] ~ Ovid

Fas est ab hoste doceri.
One should learn even from one's enemies. ~ Ovid

There is no brotherhood between love and dignity,
Nor can they share the same abode. ~ Ovid

A frail gift is beauty, which grows less as time draws on, and is devoured by its own years. ~ Ovid

In our play we reveal what kind of people we are. ~ Ovid

My bark, once struck by the fury of the storm, dreads again to approach the place of danger. ~ Ovid

Pedigree and ancestry and what we ourselves have not achieved, I scarcely recognize as our own. ~ Ovid

Small minds are captivated by trifles. ~ Ovid

I intend to speak of metamorphoses. ~ Ovid

Quotes About Ovid would suggest the entries are not quotes by Ovid. ~ Paul Burns

When the roses are gone, nothing is left but the thorn. ~ Ovid

Struggling over my fickle heart, love draws it now this
way, and now hate that
but love, I think, is winning. I
will hate, if I have strength; if not, I shall love unwilling. ~ Ovid

Love conquers all things; let us own her dominion. ~ Ovid

Tempore difficiles veniunt ad aratra juvenci;
Tempore lenta pati frena docentur equi.
In time the unmanageable young oxen come to the plough; in time the horses are taught to endure the restraining bit. ~ Ovid

There is a deity within us who breathes that divine fire by which we are animated. ~ Ovid

Not knowing what he sees, he adores the sight; That false face fools and fuels his delight ~ Ovid

Women's words are as light as the doomed leaves whirling in autumn, Easily swept by the wind, easily drowned by the wave. ~ 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

And now the measure of my song is done:
The work has reached its end; the book is mine,
None shall unwrite these words: nor angry Jove,
Nor war, nor fire, nor flood,
Nor venomous time that eats our lives away.
Then let that morning come, as come it will,
When this disguise I carry shall be no more,
And all the treacherous years of life undone,
And yet my name shall rise to heavenly music,
The deathless music of the circling stars.
As long as Rome is the Eternal City
These lines shall echo from the lips of men,
As long as poetry speaks truth on earth,
That immortality is mine to wear. ~ Ovid

Oh, is that right? You know, a lioness will protect her cub by baring her teeth, by roaring, using her claws to defend her cub if she feels she has to - this mother, has other means. You are standing in the way of my daughter's best interests. If you try to pick our peach from our family tree, you will be picking a fight. Do you understand me? ~ Steven L. Sheppard

Bring a lawsuit against a man who can pay; the poor man's acts are not worth the expense ~ Ovid

I liked to call myself a poet and had affected a habit of reading classical texts (in translation, of course – I was a lazy student). I would ride the Greyhound for thirty-six hours down from the Midwest to Leechfield, then spend days dressed in black in the scalding heat of my mother's front porch reading Homer (or Ovid or Virgil) and waiting for someone to ask me what I was reading. No one ever did. People asked me what I was drinking, how much I weighed, where I was living, and if I had married yet, but no one gave me a chance to deliver my lecture on Great Literature. ~ Mary Karr

The sea's vast depths lie open to the fish;
Wherever the breezes blow the bird may fly;
So to the brave man every land's a home. ~ Ovid

Anything cracked will shatter at a touch. ~ Ovid

Put faith in one who's had experience. ~ Ovid

And when wine has soaked Cupid's drunken wings,
he's stayed, weighed down, a captive of the place.
...
Wine rouses courage and is fit for passion:
care flies, and deep drinking dilutes it.
...
Don't trust the treacherous lamplight overmuch:
night and wine can harm your view of beauty.
Paris saw the goddesses in the light, a cloudless heaven,
when he said to Venus: 'Venus, you win, over them both.'
Faults are hidden at night: every blemish is forgiven,
and the hour makes whichever girl you like beautiful.
Judge jewellery, and fabric stained with purple,
judge a face, or a figure, in the light. ~ Ovid

Henry James rhymed Fellowship with the gesture of biting a neglected apple, and Ovid a scarlet curtain with the skin of Atalanta. ~ Hugh Kenner

Whilst you are prosperous you can number many friends; but when the storm comes you are left alone. ~ Ovid

In your judgment virtue requires no reward, and is to be sought for itself, unaccompanied by external benefits.
[Lat., Judice te mercede caret, per seque petenda est
Externis virtus incomitata bonis.] ~ Ovid

Change is always powerful. Let your hook be always cast.
In the pool where you least expect it, will be a fish. ~ Ovid

Love is a thing that is full of cares and fears. ~ Ovid

Should anyone here in Rome lack finesse at love-making,
Let him
Try me - read my book, and the results are guaranteed!
Technique is the secret. Charioteer, sailor, oarsman,
All need it.
Technique can control
Love himself. ~ 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

An almost infallible means of saving yourself from the desire of self-destruction is always to have something to do.
Creech, the commentator on Lucretius, marked upon his manuscripts: "N. B. Must hang myself when I have finished." He kept his word with himself that he might have the pleasure of ending like his author. If he had undertaken a commentary upon Ovid he would have lived longer. ~ Voltaire

Jupiter from on high smiles at the perjuries of lovers. ~ Ovid

You will go most safely by the middle way. ~ Ovid

There is a god within us, and the heavens
Have intercourse with earth; from realms above
That spirit comes. ~ Ovid

Neither can the wave that has passed by be recalled, nor the hour which has passed return again. ~ Ovid

A broken fortune is like a falling column; the lower it sinks, the greater weight it has to sustain. ~ Ovid

We believe slowly when belief brings pain. ~ Ovid

In sweet water there is a pleasure ungrudged by anyone. ~ Ovid

Even as a cow she was lovely. ~ Ovid

Sixteen, I reflected, biting into a stolen pie. By this time in her life, my sister Mary had been pregnant. Ovid had dedicated his life to poetry. Queen Elizabeth had seen a suitor beheaded. Romeo and Juliet were dead. Whereas I, Margaret Lucas, was nothing if not in health, no single true adventure to my name. ~ Danielle Dutton

I see and approve better things, but follow worse. ~ Ovid

Barbarus hic ego sum, quia non intelligor illis.
(In this place I am a barbarian, because men do not understand me.) ~ Ovid

As the hawk is wont to pursue the trembling doves. ~ Ovid

This also, that I live, I consider a gift of God. ~ Ovid

People are slow to claim confidence in undertakings of magnitude. ~ Ovid

of Alcohol - but please, be careful how you tell of them, remember Ovid shivering on the Black Sea shores, wondering how to get back in to one of the Roman villas once again. November ~ MariJo Moore

The act is judged of by the event. ~ Ovid

Believe me, the gods spare the afflicted, and do not always oppress those who are unfortunate. ~ Ovid

I flee who chases me and chase who flees me. ~ Ovid

What is reason now was passion heretofore. ~ Ovid

He who says o'er much I love not is in love. ~ Ovid

Grief brims itself and flows away in tears. ~ Ovid

Nothing is swifter than our years. ~ Ovid

Fair peace becomes men; ferocious anger belongs to beasts. ~ Ovid

Passion persuades me one way, reason another. I see the better and approve it, but I follow the worse. ~ Ovid

There is no pleasure pure and simple, and some care always
comes to mar our joys. ~ Ovid

Grant me profits only, grant me the joy of profit made,
and see to it that I enjoy cheating the buyer! ~ Ovid

O ye gods! what thick encircling darkness blinds the minds of men! ~ Ovid

Let the poor man mind his tongue ~ Ovid

The most wretched fortune is safe; for there is no fear of anything worse.
[Lat., Fortuna miserrima tuta est:
Nam timor eventus deterioris abest.] ~ Ovid

For in this strange anatomy we wear, the head has greater powers than the hand; the spirit, heart, and mind are over all. ~ Ovid

The brave find a home in every land. ~ Ovid

At some point in the evening Dellarobia had stopped being amazed that Ovid had turned into someone new, and understood he had become himself, in the presence of his wife. With the sense of a great weight settling, she recognized marriage. Not the precarious risk she's balanced for years against forbidden fruits, something easily lost in a brittle moment by flying away or jumping a train to ride off on someone else's steam. She was not about to lose it. She'd never had it. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Virtue and vice, evil and good, are siblings, or next-door neighbors, Easy to make mistakes, hard to tell them apart. ~ Ovid

He who has lived obscurely and quietly has lived well. ~ Ovid

Thy destiny is only that of man, but thy aspirations may be those of a god. ~ Ovid

A pleasing countenance is no slight disadvantage.
[Lat., Auxilium non leve vultus habet.] ~ Ovid

There is a divinity within our breast. ~ Ovid

Time is the devourer of all things. ~ Ovid

Let the man who does not wish to be idle, fall in love. ~ Ovid

Time is a stream which glides smoothly on and is past before we know. ~ Ovid

An anthill increases by accumulation. Medicine is consumed by distribution. That which is feared lessens by association. This is the thing to understand. ~ Ovid

Neglect of appearance becomes men. ~ Ovid

Giving calls for genius. ~ Ovid

Nobody knew how it all began, neither Homer nor Hesiod. Nor Ovid nor Vergil. But it was said that at the beginning, there was Chaos, which meant confusion & disorder, & there was Eros, which meant love. And confusion & disorder were what all those who were smitten by love [Eros] felt at the beginning & what all lovers felt when they fell out of love. Thus, it appeared that confusion & disorder [Chaos] was the flip-side of love & that Eros was the other face of chaos. And, thus, Eros & Chaos were in fact one. And the poets saw other aspects of Eros, such as Himeros[Passion or Desire], Anteros[Reciprocal or Mutual Love] & Pothos[Longing]. And they also saw other aspects of Chaos, such as Phobos[Fear] & Deimos[Terror]. And that since Eros & Chaos were one,all these aspects of the two were the aspects of love. ~ Nicholas Chong

All other creatures look down toward the earth, but man was given a face so that might turn his eyes toward the stars and his gaze upon the sky. ~ Ovid

From high Meonia's rocky shores I came, Of poor decsent, Acoetes is my name, My sire was measly born: no oxen ploughed, His fruitful fields, nor in his pastures lowed, His whole estate within the waters lay' With lines and hooks he caught the finny prey; His art was all his livelehood, which he Thus with his dying lips bequeathed to me: In streams, my boy, and rivers take thy chance; There swims', said he, Thy whole inheritance. ~ Ovid

The man who falls in love chill find plenty of occupation. ~ Ovid

In prosperity you may count on many friends; if the sky becomes overcast you will be alone. ~ Ovid

He lives well who lives retired, and keeps
His wants within the limits of his means. ~ Ovid

I have never injured anybody with a mordant poem; my
verse contains charges against nobody. Ingenuous, I have
shunned wit steeped in venom
not a letter of mine is dipped
in poisonous jest. ~ Ovid

Those dreams are true which we have in the morning, as the lamp begins to flicker.
[Lat., Namque sub Aurora jam dormitante lucerna
Sommia quo cerni tempore vera solent.] ~ Ovid

Temporis ars medicina fere est.
Time is generally the best medicine. ~ Ovid

The gift derives its value from the rank of the giver. ~ Ovid

Use the occasion, for it passes swiftly. ~ Ovid

The gods have their own rules. ~ Ovid

Ovid tells us, in his Metamorphoses, that the young girls who were gathering flowers with Proserpina that fatal day were turned into the Sirens - the bird-bodied golden-feathered singers with female faces of the Homeric tradition - and then went wandering about over land and sea, crying out in search of their vanished playmate. ~ Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa

Ah me! love can not be cured by herbs.
[Lat., Hei mihi! quod nullis amor est medicabilis herbis.] ~ Ovid

Sweet Echo, sweetest nymph that liv'st unseen
Within thy airy shell
By slow Meander's margent green,
And in the violet-imbroider'd vale
Where the love-lorn nightingale
Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well:
Canst thou not tell me of a gentle pair
That likest thy Narcissus are? ~ John Milton

Wine prepares the heart for love, unless you take too much. ~ Ovid

A woman is always buying something. ~ Ovid

There is a good deal in a man's mode of eating. ~ Ovid

Some wounds grow worse beneath the surgeon's hand;
Better that they were not touched at all. ~ Ovid

An evil life is a kind of death. ~ Ovid