Tacitus

Quotes

1. Great empires are not maintained by timidity.

2. 

   To every man posterity gives his due honour.

3. 

   The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.

4. 

   Every great example of punishment has in it some injustice, but the suffering individual is compensated by the public good.

5. 

   Lust of absolute power is more burning than all the passions.

6. 

   A woman after having parted with her virtue will hesitate at nothing.

7. 

   When men of talents are punished, authority is strengthened.

8. 

   There will be vices as long as there are men.

9. 

   There is a division of duties between the army and its generals. Eagerness for battle becomes the soldiers, but generals serve the cause by forethought, by counsel, by delay oftener than by temerity. As I promoted your victory to the utmost of my power by my sword and by my personal exertions, so now I must help you by prudence and by counsel, the qualities which belong peculiarly to a general.

10. 

    The younger men had been born after the victory of Actium; most even of the elder generation, during the civil wars; few indeed were left who had seen the Republic. It was thus an altered world, and of the old, unspoilt Roman character not a trace lingered. Equality was an outworn creed, and all eyes looked to the mandate of the sovereign, ...

11. 

    He had not even adopted Tiberius as his successor out of affection or any regard to the State, but, having thoroughly seen his arrogant and savage temper, he had sought glory for himself by a contrast of extreme wickedness.

12. 

    The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government.