The Sixteen Satires

Never does Nature say one thing and Wisdom another.

Many commit the same crime with a very different result. One bears a cross for his crime; another a crown.

It is to be prayed that the mind be sound in a sound body. Ask for a brave soul that lacks the fear of death, which places the length of life last among nature’s blessings, which is able to bear whatever kind of sufferings, does not know anger, lusts for nothing and believes the hardships and savage labors of Hercules better than the satisfactions, feasts, and feather bed of an Eastern king. I will reveal what you are able to give yourself; For certain, the one footpath of a tranquil life lies through virtue.

It is a poor thing to lean upon the fame of others, lest the pillars give way and the house fall down in ruin.

Is it a simple form of madness to lose a hundred thousand sesterces, and not have a shirt to give to a shivering slave?

So Nature ordains; no evil example corrupts us so soon and so rapidly as one that has been set at home, since it comes into the mind on high authority.

For no deity is held in such reverence amongst us as Wealth; though as yet, O baneful money, thou hast no temple of thine own; not yet have we reared altars to Money in like manner as we worship Peace and Honour, Victory and Virtue

Benign Philosophy, by degrees, strips from us most of our vices, and all our mistakes; it is she that first teaches us the right.

Had we but wisdom, thou wouldst have no Divinity, O Fortune: it is we that make thee into a Goddess!

Many a man has met death from the rushing flood of his own eloquence; others from the strength and wondrous thews in which they have trusted.

count it the greatest of all sins to prefer life to honour, and to lose, for the sake of living, all that makes life worth having.

show me the apartment 235 that lets you sleep! In this city sleep costs millions, and that’s the root of the trouble.

there is nothing that divine Majesty will not believe concerning itself when lauded to the skies!

But just where will men draw the limit, after they see a high-born lawyer dress in transparent chiffon, to public amazement, to prosecute loose-living women? If they’re whores, bring in a guilty verdict: yet even a proven whore wouldn’t dare to rig herself out like that.

However faster we pedestrians may hurry, crowds surge ahead, those behind us buffet my rib-cage, poles poke into me; one lout swings a crossbeam down on my skull, another scores with a barrel. My legs are mud-encrusted, from all sides big feet kick me, a hobnailed soldier’s boot lands squarely on my toes.

Marry a wife, and she’ll make some smart guitarist or flute-player a father, not you.

Poor Codrus had nothing, it is true: but he lost that nothing, which was his all

You should pray for a healthy mind in a healthy body. Ask for a stout heart that has no fear of death, and deems length of days the least of Nature's gifts that can endure any kind of toil, that knows neither wrath nor desire and thinks the woes and hard labors of Hercules better than the loves and banquets and downy cushions of Sardanapalus. What I commend to you, you can give to yourself; For assuredly, the only road to a life of peace is virtue.

Who could identify fragments 260 of ownerless flesh and bone? The poor man’s flattened carcase would vanish along with his soul.

What’s infamy matter if you keep your fortune?

Duas tantum res anxius optat, Panem et circenses, by the Roman satirist Juvenal.