Virgil Quotes

Virgil had read once that Grandma Moses was a primitive painter because she thought snow was white. The writer said if you really looked at it, snow was hardly ever white. It mostly was a gentler version of the color of the sky - blue, gray, orange in the evenings and mornings, often with purple shadows. When he looked, sure enough, the guy was right, and Grandma Moses had her head up her ass. ~ John Sandford

Facilis descensus Averno:
Noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis;
Sed revocare gradium superasque evadere ad auras,
Hoc opus, hic labor est.
(The gates of Hell are open night and day;
Smooth the descent, and easy is the way:
But to return, and view the cheerful skies,
In this task and mighty labor lies.) ~ Virgil

Audaces fortuna iuvat (latin)- Fortune favors the bold. ~ Virgil

They are able because they think they are able. ~ Virgil

Such words he utters, and sick with deep distress he feigns hope on his face, and keeps his anguish hidden deep in his breast. ~ Virgil

Dante cuts short his excursion and returns to find Virgil mounted on the back of Geryon. Dante joins his Master and they fly down from the great cliff. Their flight carries them from the Hell of the VIOLENT AND THE BESTIAL (The Sins of the Lion) into the Hell of the FRAUDULENT AND MALICIOUS (The Sins of the Leopard). ~ Dante Alighieri

Where I trained at in Florida, though, they didn't have Jack in the Box. There were a couple of nights where they were all I could think about. But, it worked out for me at the combine. It paid off. ~ Virgil Green

Fear and desire for pleasure. Aggressiveness comes out of fear, predominantly, and sexuality predominantly out of the other. But they mix in the middle. Anyway, both of these impulses can destroy order, which comes out of both drives, and which is another human need I haven't yet fit into my scheme. So both have to be controlled. But in fact, despite religious commands to the contrary, aggressiveness has never really been condemned. It's been exalted, from the Bible through Homer and Virgil right down to Humbert Hemingway. Have you ever heard of a John Wayne movie being censored? did you ever see them take war books off the bookstands? They leave the genitals off Barbie and Ken, but they manufacture every kind of war toy. Because sex is more threatening to us than aggression. There have been strict rules about sex since the beginning of written rules, and even before, if we can believe myth. I think that's because it's in sex that men feel most vulnerable. In war they can hype themselves up, or they have a weapon. Sex means being literally naked and exposing your feelings. And that's more terrifying to most men than the risk of dying while fighting a bear or a soldier. Look at the rules! You can have sex if you're married, and you have to marry a person of the opposite gender, the same color and religion, an age close to your own, of the right social and economic background, even the right height, for God's sake, or else everybody gets up in arms, they disinherit you or threa ~ Marilyn French

All the books were beginning to turn against me. Indeed, I must have been blind as a bat not to have seen it long before, the ludicrous contradiction between my theory of life and my actual experiences as a reader. George MacDonald had done more to me than any other writer; of course it was a pity that he had that bee in his bonnet about Christianity. He was good in spite of it. Chesterton has more sense than all the other moderns put together; bating, of course, his Christianity. Johnson was one of the few authors whom I felt I could trust utterly; curiously enough, he had the same kink. Spenser and Milton by a strange coincidence had it too. Even among ancient authors the same paradox was to be found. The most religious (Plato, Aeschylus, Virgil) were clearly those on whom I could really feed. On the other hand, those writers who did not suffer from religion and with whom in theory my sympathy ought to have been complete -- Shaw and Wells and Mill and Gibbon and Voltaire -- all seemed a little thin; what as boys we called "tinny". It wasn't that I didn't like them. They were all (especially Gibbon) entertaining; but hardly more. There seemed to be no depth in them. They were too simple. The roughness and density of life did not appear in their books. ~ C.S. Lewis

Rhoetus was fully awake; he saw all that occurred but was hiding, 345 Watching in fear from behind a huge bowl where the wine had been blended. But he arose as the enemy neared and Euryalus plunged his Blade hilt-deep in his chest, then withdrew. Death came in abundance. Spewing the crimson of life, he returns to the bowl a new mixture: Wine and his blood as he dies. ~ Virgil

JENKINS AND VIRGIL walked back up the valley to the Ruff house, and found Muddy inside, tootling on a black electric guitar, a complex ~ John Sandford

Macte virtute, sic itur ad astra.

("excellence is the way to the stars" - IX.641) ~ Virgil, Aeneid

The seeds of life - fiery is their force, divine their birth, but they are weighed down by the bodies' ills or dulled by limbs and flesh that's born for death. That is the source of all men's fears and longings, joys and sorrows, nor can they see the heaven's light, shut up in the body's tomb, a prison dark and deep. ~ Virgil

All these souls, after they have passed away a thousand years, are summoned by the divine ones in great array, to the lethean river ... In this way they become forgetful of the former earthlife, and re-visit the vaulted realms of the world, willing to return again into living bodies. ~ Virgil

In quarrels such as these
not ours to intervene. ~ Virgil

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

Flowing like water through the fires of life,
Touching the earth through waves of light
Reaching for air when you're tired to fight
Extinguish the flames, you'll be alright ~ Virgil Kalyana Mittata Iordache

I have known sorrow and learned to aid the wretched. ~ Virgil

He like a rock in the sea unshaken stands his ground. ~ Virgil

Cursed greed of gold, what crimes thy tyrant power has caused.
Virgil ~ Debby Grahl

Here, too, the honorable finds its due
and there are tears for passing things; here, too,
things mortal touch the mind. ~ Virgil

Virgil put it with Roman bluntness and economy. Dolus an virtus, quis in hoste requirat? cried Aeneas's comrade as they fought their way out of burning Troy disguised in Greek armor; which may be loosely translated: It won't matter to the enemy whether you beat him by guile or by valor. ~ Thaddeus Holt

A shifty, fickle object is woman, always. (Varium et mutabile semper femina.) ~ Virgil

We are not all able to do all things. ~ Virgil

From a single crime know the nation. ~ Virgil

In a shadowy place something white flew up. It was a heron, and it went away over the dark treetops. William Wallace followed it with his eyes and Brucie clapped his hands, but Virgil gave a sigh, as if he knew that when you go looking for what is lost, everything is a sign.
("The Wide Net") ~ Eudora Welty

What a tale he's told, what a bitter bowl of war he's drunk to the dregs. ~ Virgil

In youth alone, unhappy mortals live; But, ah! the mighty bliss is fugitive: Discolour'd sickness, anxious labour, come, And age, and death's inexorable doom. ~ Virgil

I look at you and I write down what I hear. ~ Virgil Thomson

In general, anyone who paid the long distance telephone tax will get the refund on their 2006 federal income tax return. This includes individuals, businesses and non-profit organizations. ~ Virgil Goode

But if my forces are not enough, I am hardly the one to relent, I'll plead for the help I need, wherever it may be - if I cannot sway the heavens, I'll wake the powers of hell! ~ Virgil

Sorry I called you Goat-molester," Virgil said. "It was the first thing that came into my head, honestly."
"I don't need your damn apology!"
"Then why are you here?"
"I came here to kick your ass!"
"You might want to do that from a standing position."
"Screw you! I'll get up in my own time! ~ Derek Landy

The warmth of summer, the richness of expansion that creates the perfect environment for a body that wants to feel at least the illusion of warmth on top of its' old persevering soul that dwells within. This season, I no longer try to reach for that external warmth, but rather pray to find that spark that could light me up from deep inside. I trust my intuition and I know it is near, if only my eyes wouldn't be blinded by the sun. ~ Virgil Kalyana Mittata Iordache

Virgil to Percy: "Well, sir, no offense, but you're rather shaky with all things moral and ethical yourself."
Percy thought he ought to be even more affronted, but he found this to be more like a compliment than not. It implied that he never allowed his scientific analysis of a situation to be troubled by how the rest of the world thought it ought to be. ~ Gail Carriger

Colt makes a heavy firearm." - Virgil Cole ~ Robert B. Parker

This spirit of humanity breathes in Cicero and Virgil. Hence the veneration paid to the poet of the Aeneid by the fathers and throughout the middle ages. Augustine calls him the noblest of poets, and Dante, "the glory and light of other poets," and "his master," who guided him through the regions of hell and purgatory to the very gates of Paradise. It was believed that in his fourth Eclogue he had prophesied the advent of Christ. This interpretation is erroneous; but "there is in Virgil," says an accomplished scholar,84 "a vein of thought and sentiment more devout, more humane, more akin to the Christian than is to be found in any other ancient poet, whether Greek or Roman. He was a spirit prepared and waiting, though he knew it not, for some better thing to be revealed. ~ Philip Schaff

The dewy night unrolls a heaven thickly jewelled with sparkling stars ~ Virgil

Grimaud left the chamber, and led the way to the hall, where, according
to the custom of the province, the body was laid out, previously to
being put away forever. D'Artagnan was struck at seeing two open coffins
in the hall. In reply to the mute invitation of Grimaud, he approached,
and saw in one of them Athos, still handsome in death, and, in the
other, Raoul with his eyes closed, his cheeks pearly as those of the
Palls of Virgil, with a smile on his violet lips. He shuddered at seeing
the father and son, those two departed souls, represented on earth by
two silent, melancholy bodies, incapable of touching each other, however
close they might be. ~ Alexandre Dumas

Night reigned: all through the world tied bodies were harvesting tranquil slumber. ~ Virgil

All of us who serve in the House of Representatives and the Senate pay into Social Security. ~ Virgil Goode

Dear solitude, how I missed you in the times I was so attached to the illusion of loneliness, how I secretly longed for you in times of distraction with music and addiction, how I desired to dive into the creativity of your silent whispers.. oh solitude, I remember you there when I wrote my first book, I recall your inspiring voice when that pen hit the paper.. When I was no longer by your side, oh solitude, how you silently tried to draw me back to you, by showing me the continuous struggle to feel full among unfulfilling relationships or restless nights of loneliness.. Oh solitude, if it wasn't for you, where would I find all that you could provide, only you.. ~ Virgil Kalyana Mittata Iordache

Myself acquainted with misfortune, I learn to help the unfortunate. ~ Virgil

One man excels in eloquence, another in arms. ~ Virgil

What each man feared would happen to himself, did not trouble him when he saw that it would ruin another. ~ Virgil

What is it that had caught your interest so and makes you lag behind?' My master [Virgil] asked, 'What do you care of they are whispering? Keep up with mr and let those people talk! Be like a solid tower, whose brave height remains unmoved by the winds that blow: the man who lets his thoughts be turned aside by one thing or another will lose sight of his true goal, his mind sapped of it's strength. ~ Dante Alighieri

If one swain scorns you, you will soon find another. ~ Virgil

Silence is good smetimes. That's when you're able to heart best" -Ruby

"Hear what" - Virgil

"Your thoughts"

"That's the problem. People don't want to listen to their thoughts, so they fill the world with noise" -Ruby ~ Erin Entrada Kelly

[He]
Spoke and rose to full height, sword in air,
Then cleft the man's brow square between the temples
Cutting his head in two
a dreadful gash
Between the cheeks all beardless. Earth resounded
Quivering at the great shock of his weight
As he went tumbling down in all his armor,
Drenched with blood and brains; in equal halves
His head hung this and that way from his shoulders. ~ Virgil

Twice ten fat oxen to the ships she sends; Besides a hundred boars, a hundred lambs, With bleating cries, attend their milky dams; And jars of gen'rous wine and spacious bowls She gives, to cheer the sailors' drooping souls. Now purple hangings clothe the palace walls, And sumptuous feasts are made in splendid halls: On Tyrian carpets, richly wrought, they dine; With loads of massy plate the sideboards shine, And antique vases, all of gold embossed (The gold itself inferior to the cost), Of curious work, where on the sides were seen The fights and figures of illustrious men, From their first founder to the present queen. ~ Virgil

Persistent work triumphs. ~ Virgil

Look with favour upon a bold beginning. ~ Virgil

Harsh necessity, and the newness of my kingdom, force me to do such things and to guard my frontiers everywhere. ~ Virgil

I am a college-educated American. In all my years of formal schooling, I never read Plato or Aristotle, Homer or Virgil. I knew nothing of Greek and Roman history and barely grasped the meaning of the Middle Ages. Dante was a stranger to me, and so was Shakespeare. The fifteen hundred years of Christianity from the end of the New Testament to the Reformation were a blank page, and I knew only the barest facts about Luther's revolution. I was ignorant of Descartes and Newton. My understanding of Western history began with the Enlightenment. Everything that came before it was lost behind a misty curtain of forgetting. Nobody did this on purpose. Nobody tried to deprive me of my civilizational patrimony. But nobody felt any obligation to present it to me and my generation in an orderly, coherent fashion. Ideas have consequences - and so does their lack. ~ Rod Dreher

Unlike Virgil, Homer is no part of the classical age, has no truck with judicious distinction or the calm management of life and society. He precedes that order, is a preclassic, immoderate, uncompromising, never sacrificing truth for grace. ~ Adam Nicolson

From my example learn to be just, and not to despise the gods. ~ Virgil

In his deepest heart there surge tremendous shame and madness mixed with sorrow and love whipped on by frenzy and a courage aware of its own worth. ~ Virgil

Endure the present, and watch for better things. ~ Virgil

Nd why the winter suns so rush to bathe themselves in the sea
and what slows down the nights to a long lingering crawl ... ~ Virgil

Poetry reproduces an indefinable mood that is more amorous than love itself. Venus is not so beautiful all naked, alive, and panting, as she is here in Virgil. ~ Michel De Montaigne

Love begets love, love knows no rules, this is same for all. ~ Virgil

The writer, having lost his way in a gloomy forest, and being hindered by certain wild beasts from ascending a mountain, is met by Virgil, who promises to show him the punishments of Hell, and afterwards of Purgatory; and that he shall then be conducted by Beatrice into Paradise. He follows the Roman Poet. ~ Dante Alighieri

Gonna rain like a cow pissin' on a flat rock [drugstore clerk to detective Virgil Flowers] Dark of the Moon, p.7 ~ John Sandford

The whole genius of an author consists in describing well, and delineating character well. Homer, Plato, Virgil, Horace only excel other writers by their expressions and images; we must indicate what is true if we mean to write naturally, forcibly and delicately. ~ Jean De La Bruyere

If a child has an older sibling involved in an addiction, there is a 90 percent chance that he or she will get involved too. ~ Virgil Miller Newton

Cease to think that the decrees of the gods can be changed by prayers. ~ Virgil

The fearsome critic and not-very-tough composer Virgil Thomson once drew up a set of rules for hearing an unfamiliar work; the last of those is the question I take with me to every new-music event: "Is this just a good piece of clockwork, or does it actually tell time? ~ Aaron Copland

We need to thank all of our troops, and particularly those for whom we can never express enough gratitude for they have given their lives so that all of us may be free and that our democracy can be a shining light for the rest of the world. ~ Virgil Goode

If ever we should find ourselves disposed not to admire those writers or artists, Livy and Virgil for instance, Raphael or Michael Angelo, whom all the learned had admired, [we ought] not to follow our own fancies, but to study them until we know how and what we ought to admire; and if we cannot arrive at this combination of admiration with knowledge, rather to believe that we are dull, than that the rest of the world has been imposed on. ~ Edmund Burke

You don't need paper to write a letter. You can write letters in your head" -Ruby

"What do you mean?" -Virgil

"You close your eyes and mouth and send your thoughts through the universe" -Ruby ~ Erin Entrada Kelly

The History of Ireland in two words: Ah well.

The Invasion by the Vikings: Ah well.

The Invasion by the Normans. The Flight of the Earls, Mr Oliver Cromwell. Daniel O'Connell, Robert Emmett, The Famine, Charles Stewart Parnell, Easter Rising, Michael Collins, Éamon De Valera, Éamon De Valera again (Dear Germany, so sorry to learn of the death of your Mr Hitler), Éamon De Valera again, the Troubles, the Tribunals, the Fianna Fáil Party, The Church, the Banks, the eight hundred years of rain: Ah well.

In the Aeneid Virgil tells it as Sunt lacrimae rerum, which in Robert Fitzgerald's translation means 'They weep for how the world goes', which is more eloquent than Ah well but means the same thing. ~ Niall Williams

He eyed in the far corner of the room the carton of books they'd schlepped across the pond(ocean) They were both fearful of being stuck without a decent book, and who knew they would find everything from Virgil to Synge on the shelves of a fishing lodge? ~ Jan Karon

Having been established by George Washington under the direction of the first Attorney General, the U.S. Marshals Service was filled with notable characters of the past such as the Earp Brothers - Wyatt, Morgan, and Virgil. Others included Bat Masterson and Wild Bill Hickok, along with Bass Reeves who was the first black man to hold this prestigious position. ~ Roger Grubbs

Friend, have the courage
To care little for wealth, and shape yourself,
You too, to merit godhead. ~ Virgil

The gates of Hell are open night and day; smooth the descent and easy is the way. ~ Virgil

If American citizens don't wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran ~ Virgil Goode

It is a sign of the times that the absence of meaningful ID requirements in many states leaves our voting process vulnerable to fraud and allows legal votes to be cancelled out by illegally cast ballots. ~ Virgil Goode

Arma Virumque Cano (I sing of arms and of man) -The Aeneid ~ Aeneas Middleton

Further, the United States is moving ahead in the development of clean coal technology. There are vast coal reserves in our country, and when it is burned cleanly, coal can provide a resource to supply a large amount of our energy requirements. ~ Virgil Goode

Virgil is serene and lovely like a marble Apollo in the moonlight; Homer is a beautiful, animated youth in the full sunlight with the wind in his hair. ~ Helen Keller

From one learn all. ~ Virgil

Is there so much anger in the minds of the gods? ~ Virgil

It's not regret for staying. It is nostalgia for something that we believe is true in our illusion, something we will never have. And if we touched it, we would soon realize that it was not what we dreamed of. ~ Constantin Virgil Gheorghiu

Want of pluck shows want of blood. ~ Virgil

I believe Jack Smith might have written THE BOOK on writing and revising for publication. Clean, direct, succinct
a book that is full of pure wisdom and truth, but also amazing technical advice. ~ Virgil Suarez

They can conquer who belive they can. ~ Virgil

At an early age I sucked up the milk of Homer, Virgil, Horace, Terence, Anacreon, Plato and Euripides, diluted with that of Moses and the prophets. ~ Denis Diderot

The greatest poet who ever wrote about rowing is Virgil, the greatest historian is Thucydides, but the greatest imagination ever to turn its attention to the sport is that of painter, Thomas Eakins. ~ Barry S. Strauss

It never troubles the wolf how many the sheep may be. ~ Virgil

The flocks fear the wolf, the crops the storm, and the trees the wind. ~ Virgil

I dragged on my ruined life in darkness and grief, wrathful in my heart... ~ Virgil

Time is the sole resource you gain if spent and waste if not. ~ VIRGIL PROFEANU

It is easy to go down into Hell; night and day, the gates of dark Death stand wide; but to climb back again, to retrace one's steps to the upper air - there's the rub, the task. ~ Virgil

They no longer had any hope, but they had despair. Despair is a last weapon that sometimes brings victory; Virgil said so. ~ Victor Hugo

Viresque Acquirit Eundo.(She gathers strength as she goes.) ~ Virgil, From Aeneid

Thirty centuries of history allow us to look with supreme pity on certain doctrines which are preached beyond the Alps by the descendants of those who were illiterate when Rome had Caesar, Virgil, and Augustus. ~ Benito Mussolini

How is the soul profited by the strife of Hector, the arguments of Plato, the poems of Virgil, or the elegies of Ovid, who, with others like them, are now gnashing their teeth in the prison of the infernal Babylon, under the cruet tyranny of Pluto? ~ Honorius Augustodunensis

Fury itself supplies arms. ~ Virgil

Truly Virgil was right: love was a form of sickness. It altered people, made them behave in strange and irrational ways. ~ Donna Woolfolk Cross

All things by nature are ready to get worse ~ Virgil

I too am a poet who has found some favour with the Muse. I too have written songs. I too have heard the shepherds call me bard. But I take it from them with a grain of salt: I have the feeling that I cannot yet compare with Varius or Cinna, but cackle like a goose among melodious swans. ~ Virgil