Talk:Cato the Elder

Unsourced

• An angry man opens his mouth and shuts his eyes.

• An orator is a good man who is skilled in speaking.

• Anger so clouds the mind, that it cannot perceive the truth

• Be firm or mild as the occasion may require.

• Cessation of work is not accompanied by cessation of expenses.
  • Variant: Even though work stops, expenses run on.

• Consider it the greatest of all virtues to restrain the tongue.

• Vir bonus, dicendi peritus
  • A good man, skilled in speaking. [Definition of an orator]

• Do not expect good from another's death.

• Don't promise twice what you can do at once.

• From lightest words sometimes the direst quarrel springs.

• I think the first virtue is to restrain the tongue; he approaches nearest to gods who knows how to be silent, even though he is in the right.
  • Variants: He is nearest to the gods who knows how to be silent.

• I would much rather have men ask why I have no statue, than why I have one.
  • Response when asked during a celebration of a new statue being dedicated to some other public figure, why there were no statues of him.
    Variants: I had far rather that people should ask why there is no statue of me than why there is one.
    After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one.

• In conversation avoid the extremes of forwardness and reserve.

• In doing nothing men learn to do evil.

• It is a hard matter, my fellow citizens, to argue with the belly, since it has no ears.
  • Variant: It is difficult to speak to the belly, because it has no ears.

• Lighter is the wound foreseen.

• Not that I might die learned—but that I might not die unlearned.

• Old age isn't so bad when you consider the alternatives.

• Patience is the greatest of all virtues.

• Should anyone attempt to deceive you by false expressions, and not be a true friend at heart, act in the same manner, and thus art will defeat art.
  • Variant: If you would catch a man let him think he is catching you.

• The best way to keep good acts in memory is to refresh them with new.

• The worst ruler is one who cannot rule himself.

• 'Tis sometimes the height of wisdom to feign stupidity.

• We cannot control the evil tongues of others; but a good life enables us to disregard them.

• In my life, I have never repented but of three things: that I trust a woman with a secret, that I went by sea when I might have gone by land, and that I passed a day with idleness.