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

“Ariel looked at her then, instead of the sky, instead of the horizon that surely beckoned to him. “Out of a thousand different winds, I think I can resist nine hundred and ninety-nine of them.

Now she was the one unable to swallow. “And the last one?”

"That one wrenches the beating heart from my chest, the blood from my veins, the marrow from my bones.” Grasping her hand, he brought it up to his face and rubbed it against his cheek. Pain radiated from his pale skin, from his eyes, from his lips when they grazed her knuckles. “You’ve two birds to do your bidding, my fair huntress, but I want you to choose me, to love me above all others, to make the pain in my soul worthwhile… or I would be free of you.”
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“Mother did not answer. She was still gazing up at the sky. After a while she said, "I made up a sort of saying for myself, Nat. I will lift up my eyes unto the stars. Sometimes, if you look at the stars long enough, it helps. It shrinks your day-by-day troubles down to size." She smiled. 'We'd better go back. Granny and Father will be wondering where we are.”
― Jean Lee Latham, quote from Carry On, Mr. Bowditch


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― Karleen Koen, quote from Through a Glass Darkly


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Hanno Hath”
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