Caesar Quotes

“Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus; and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.”
― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

“Caesarhad his Brutus, Charles the First hisCromwell;and George the Third — ['Treason!' cried the Speaker] —may profit by their example.If this be treason, make the most of it.”
― Patrick Henry

“As I love the name of honour more than I fear death.”
― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

“We are the centuries... We have your eoliths and your mesoliths and your neoliths. We have your Babylons and your Pompeiis, your Caesars and your chromium-plated (vital-ingredient impregnated) artifacts. We have your bloody hatchets and your Hiroshimas. We march in spite of Hell, we do – Atrophy, Entropy, and Proteus vulgaris, telling bawdy jokes about a farm girl name of Eve and a traveling salesman called Lucifer. We bury your dead and their reputations. We bury you. We are the centuries. Be born then, gasp wind, screech at the surgeon’s slap, seek manhood, taste a little godhood, feel pain, give birth, struggle a little while, succumb: (Dying, leave quietly by the rear exit, please.) Generation, regeneration, again, again, as in a ritual, with blood-stained vestments and nail-torn hands, children of Merlin, chasing a gleam. Children, too, of Eve, forever building Edens – and kicking them apart in berserk fury because somehow it isn’t the same. (AGH! AGH! AGH! – an idiot screams his mindless anguish amid the rubble. But quickly! let it be inundated by the choir, chanting Alleluias at ninety decibels.)”
― Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz

“I sometimes think that never blows so red
The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled;
That every Hyacinth the Garden wears
Dropt in its Lap from some once lovely Head.”
― Omar Khayyám, Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

“I loved him so, even his past was precious to me. I found myself kissing each mark, thinking,I would have had it never happen, I would wish it away,taking him further and further back to a time when he had known no disappointments, no battles, no wounds, as I erased each one. To make him again like Caesarion. Yet if we take the past away from those we love - even to protect them - do we not steal their very selves?”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy in the minds of men. Therefore atheism did never perturb states; for it makes men wary of themselves, as looking no further: and we see the times inclined to atheism (as the time of Augustus Cæsar) were civil times. But superstition hath been the confusion of many states, and bringeth in a new primum mobile, that ravisheth all the spheres of government. The master of superstition is the people; and in all superstition wise men follow fools; and arguments are fitted to practice, in a reversed order.”
― Francis Bacon

“Homer, in the second book of the Iliad says with fine enthusiasm," Give me masturbation or give me death. "Caesar, in his Commentaries, says," To the lonely it is company; to the forsaken it is a friend; to the aged and to the impotent it is a benefactor. They that are penniless are yet rich, in that they still have this majestic diversion. "In another place this experienced observer has said," There are times when I prefer it to sodomy. "Robinson Crusoe says," I cannot describe what I owe to this gentle art. "Queen Elizabeth said," It is the bulwark of virginity. "Cetewayo, the Zulu hero, remarked," A jerk in the hand is worth two in the bush. "The immortal Franklin has said," Masturbation is the best policy. "Michelangelo and all of the other old masters--" old masters, "I will remark, is an abbreviation, a contraction--have used similar language. Michelangelo said to Pope Julius II," Self-negation is noble, self-culture beneficent, self-possession is manly, but to the truly great and inspiring soul they are poor and tame compared with self-abuse. "Mr. Brown, here, in one of his latest and most graceful poems, refers to it in an eloquent line which is destined to live to the end of time--" None knows it but to love it; none name it but to praise.”
― Mark Twain, On Masturbation

“Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

“He looked like a man who could survive a couple of flesh wounds, but then so had Achilles and Caesar.”
― Oyinkan Braithwaite, My Sister, the Serial Killer

“If we assume that the last breath of, say,Julius Caesarhas by now become thoroughly scattered through the atmosphere, then the chances are that each of us inhales one molecule of it with every breath we take.”
― James Jeans, An Introduction to the Kinetic Theory of Gases

“How DARE you and the rest of your barbarians set fire to my library? Play conqueror all you want, MightyCaesar!Rape, murder, pillage thousands, even millions of human beings! But neither you nor any other barbarian has the right to destroy one human thought!”
― sidney buchman

“And when we say also that the Word, who is the first-birth of God, was produced without sexual union, and that He, Jesus Christ, our Teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter. For you know how many sons your esteemed writers ascribed to Jupiter: Mercury, the interpreting word and teacher of all; Aesculapius, who, though he was a great physician, was struck by a thunderbolt, and so ascended to heaven; and Bacchus too, after he had been torn limb from limb; and Hercules, when he had committed himself to the flames to escape his toils; and the sons of Leda, and Dioscuri; and Perseus, son of Danae; and Bellerophon, who, though sprung from mortals, rose to heaven on the horse Pegasus. For what shall I say of Ariadne, and those who, like her, have been declared to be set among the stars? And what of the emperors who die among yourselves, whom you deem worthy of deification, and in whose behalf you produce some one who swears he has seen the burning Caesar rise to heaven from the funeral pyre? And what kind of deeds are recorded of each of these reputed sons of Jupiter, it is needless to tell to those who already know. This only shall be said, that they are written for the advantage and encouragement of youthful scholars; for all reckon it an honourable thing to imitate the gods. But far be such a thought concerning the gods from every well-conditioned soul, as to believe that Jupiter himself, the governor and creator of all things, was both a parricide and the son of a parricide, and that being overcome by the love of base and shameful pleasures, he came in to Ganymede and those many women whom he had violated and that his sons did like actions. But, as we said above, wicked devils perpetrated these things. And we have learned that those only are deified who have lived near to God in holiness and virtue; and we believe that those who live wickedly and do not repent are punished in everlasting fire.”
― Justin Martyr, The First Apology of Justin Martyr, Addressed to the Emperor Antoninus Pius; Prefaced by Some Account of the Writings and Opinions of Justin

“Democracy, indeed, has a fair-appearing name and conveys the impression of bringing equal rights to all through equal laws, but its results are seen not to agree at all with its title. Monarchy, on the contrary, has an unpleasant sound, but is a most practical form of government to live under. For it is easier to find a single excellent man than many of them, section 2and if even this seems to some a difficult feat, it is quite inevitable that the other alternative should be acknowledged to be impossible; for it does not belong to the majority of men to acquire virtue. And again, even though a base man should obtain supreme power, yet he is preferable to the masses of like character, as the history of the Greeks and barbarians and of the Romans themselves proves. section 3For successes have always been greater and more frequent in the case both of cities and of individuals under kings than under popular rule, and disasters do not happen so frequently under monarchies as under mob-rule. Indeed, if ever there has been a prosperous democracy, it has in any case been at its best for only a brief period, so long, that is, as the people had neither the numbers nor the strength sufficient to cause insolence to spring up among them as the result of good fortune or jealousy as the result of ambition.”
― Cassius Dio, The Roman History: The Reign of Augustus

“I came, I saw, I bought!”
― Ljupka Cvetanova, The New Land

“Caesar of the 21st century: I came! I saw! I bought!”
― Ljupka Cvetanova, The New Land

“We wear the purple”
― Gore Vidal, Julian

“All power has its derivation from God; the Russian Czar, however, was granted a special significance distinguishing him from the rest of the world's rulers…. He is a successor of the Caesars of the Eastern Empire,…the founders of the very creed of the Faith of Christ…. Herein lies the mystery of the deep distinction between Russia and all the nations of the world.”
― Mikhail Nikiforovich Katkov, Modern Nationalism and Religion

“Alexander and Caesar have had this in common: to be loved and wept by the conquered, and to perish by the hands of their own countrymen. Such men have no country; they belong to the world.”
― Jules Michelet, History of France

“Caesar does not love, nor does he inspire love. He diffuses an equable sense of ordered good will, a passionless energy that creates without fever, and which expends itself without self-examination or self-doubt.”
― Thornton Wilder, The Ides of March

“That something is not impossible does not mean that it happened.”
― Adrian Goldsworthy, Antony and Cleopatra

“Caesar is a different category of man altogether. Pompey merely wants to rule the world. Caesar longs to smash it to pieces and remake it in his own image.”
― Robert Harris, Conspirata

“Caesar's messengers didn't go round the world saying, 'Caesar is lord, so if you feel you need to have a Roman-empire kind of experience, you might want to submit to him'.”
― N. T. Wright

“The women of Republican times are silent. Rarely calling for comment in the history books, they are named on tombstones, flit in arrogant beauty through poetry, or appear even as monsters of iniquity in a court of law. Yet they themselves do not speak and they have left no literature of any sort of their own. In this book, however, Roman women live and love and hate anything but silently. (author's note To the Reader in 'A Roman Death'.)”
― Joan O'Hagan

“It is not known what the Germanic tribes thought of the Romans who edged up to the river Elbe around the time of the birth of Christ, but for their part the Romans viewed these frightening tribesmen with a mixture of awe and contempt. Julius Caesar had incorporated the river Rhine into the empire by 31 BC but had refused to allow expansion further east; not only did he believe that the dark forests were home to fearful beasts and magical creatures like unicorns, but he and other Romans considered the Germans to be too barbaric to be absorbed into the empire. General Velleius was typical when he dismissed them as ‘wild creatures’ incapable of learning arts or laws, or said that they resembled human beings only in that they could speak.”
― Alexandra Richie, Faust's Metropolis: A History of Berlin

“Every time he loses, he simply doubles his stake and rolls the dice again”
― Robert Harris

“Memento mori.”
― Caesar's Praetorian Guard

“For no matter what they made of him, Caesar Augustus always knew that he was nothing but mere mortal.”
― Emmanuel Onimisi, The Faces of Christmas

“CLEOPATRA SPEAKS

I conquered Caesar
yet was slain by Rome
Last true Queen of Egypt

It is not Antony
I speak from cold lips

I whisper, Ô mighty Egypt
Ô mighty Nile
into your glory, I give my spirit”
― Ramon William Ravenswood, Icons Speak

“Kill him!" he roared, pointing at Troy. "Kill him at once!”
― Phoebe Hinkle, Thunder of Time