Quotes from The Satyricon

Petronius Arbiter ·  272 pages

Rating: (5.7K votes)


“Can't you see that I'm only advising you to beg yourself not to be so dumb?”
― Petronius Arbiter, quote from The Satyricon


“Nothing is falser than people's preconceptions and ready-made opinions; nothing is sillier than their sham morality...”
― Petronius Arbiter, quote from The Satyricon


“Everyone will find what he's looking for. Nothing pleases everyone: this man gathers thorns, that one roses.”
― Petronius Arbiter, quote from The Satyricon


“utres inflati ambulamus. minoris quam muscae sumus, muscae tamen aliquam uirtutem habent, nos non pluris sumus quam bullae.”
― Petronius Arbiter, quote from The Satyricon


“I said everything that a painful swelling in one's libido tells one to say.”
― Petronius Arbiter, quote from The Satyricon



“All those who are left legacies in my will…will obtain my bequests only on one condition, that they cut my body in pieces and eat it before the eyes of the citizens…You must merely shield your eyes, and imagine that what you have swallowed is not human entrails but ten million sesterces.”
― Petronius Arbiter, quote from The Satyricon


“Just as in dicing, Fortune smiles or lowers; When good luck beckons, then your friend his gleeful service gives But basely flies when ruin o'er you towers.”
― Petronius Arbiter, quote from The Satyricon


“No man on earth may look on forbidden things as you have done and escape punishment. Especially here, a land so infested with divinity that one might meet a god more easily than a man.”
― Petronius Arbiter, quote from The Satyricon


“Nada hay más falso que los estúpidos respetos humanos y nada más estúpido que una hipócrita severidad.”
― Petronius Arbiter, quote from The Satyricon


“Es gibt nichts Verfehlteres als die unsinnige Voreingenommenheit der Menschen und nichts Dümmeres als gleisnerische Sittenstrenge.”
― Petronius Arbiter, quote from The Satyricon



“After all, I was once like you are, but being the right sort I got where I am.”
― Petronius Arbiter, quote from The Satyricon


“So the starry sky turns round like a millstone, always bringing some trouble, and men being born or dying.”
― Petronius Arbiter, quote from The Satyricon


“It's the old headpiece that makes a man, the rest is all rubbish.”
― Petronius Arbiter, quote from The Satyricon


About the author

Petronius Arbiter
Born place: Massalia (Marseille), France
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Popular quotes

“My mother is finally rolling out her kulebiaka dough, maneuvering intently on a dime size oasis of kitchen counter. I inhale the sweetish tang of fermented yeast once again and try to plumb my unconscious for some collective historical taste memory. No dice. There's no yeast in my DNA. No heirloom pie recipes passed down by generations of women in the yellowing pages of family notebooks, scribbled in pre-revolutionary Russian orthography. My two grandmothers were emaciated New Soviet women, meaning they barely baked, wouldn't be caught dead cooking 'czarist.' Curious and passionate about food all her life, Mom herself only became serious about baking after we emigrated. In the USSR she relied on a dough called na skoruyu ruku ('flick of a hand'), a version involving little kneading and no rising. It was a recipe she'd had to teach her mother. My paternal babushka, Alla, simply wasn't interested.”
― Anya von Bremzen, quote from Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing


“أؤمن بأن هذا الشعب لا يفنى”
― quote from The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist


“Today we often use deadlines—real and imaginary—to imprison ourselves.”
― Arianna Huffington, quote from Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder


“Sagas wouldn't be interesting if terrible things didn't happen to the people in them.”
― Jack Campbell, quote from Valiant


“We are all of us both light and dark, do you not find it so, Miss Tremayne? Wanting in our hearts to do right and able to do wrong. And so it’s the choices we’ve made, surely, that make of us what we are”
― Penelope Williamson, quote from The Passions of Emma


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