Talk:Ovid

Nec tecum possum vivere nec sine te

This is sourced to both Martial and Ovid. At least one of these attributions must be wrong. Neil 15:08, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

It is Ovid; Amores, Book III IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 11:31, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

From both, surprisingly.
Ovidius reads: Sic ego nec sine te nec tecum vivere possum. from Amores, Book III, xib, 39
Martialis: Nec tecum possum vivere, nec sine te. from Epigrams, Book XII, 46
IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 11:31, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Unsourced

Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable, precise and verifiable source for any quote on this list please move it to Ovid. --Antiquary 18:42, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

• In the winter season,
  For seven days of calm, Alcyone
  Broods over her nest on the surface of the waters
  While the sea-waves are quiet. Through this time
  Aeolus keeps his winds at home, and ocean
  Is smooth for his descendants' sake.
  • Claimed to be a translated by Rolfe Humphries

• It is the mind that makes the man, and our vigour is in our immortal soul.
  • Attributed here as being from Metamorphoses, Book XIII; line 362; however, see Frank Justus Miller's translation of Metamorphoses XIII, 361-369:
    "Your right arm is useful in the battle; but when it comes to thinking you need my guidance. You have force without intelligence; while mine is the care for to-morrow. You are a good fighter; but is I who help Atrides select the time of fighting. Your value is in your body only; mine, in mind. And, as much as he who directs the ship surpasses him who only rows it, as much as the general exceeds the common soldier, so much greater am I than you. For in these bodies of ours the heart is of more value than the hand; all our real living is in that."

• Let others praise ancient times, I am glad I was born in these.
  • Ars Amatoria, III.121--2 here Prisca iuvent alios: ego me nunc denique natum / Gratulor: haec aetas moribus apta meis.

• A horse never runs so fast as when he has other horses to catch up and outpace.
  • Variant: The spirited horse, which will try to win the race of its own accord, will run even faster if encouraged.

• A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man's brow.

• A prince should be slow to punish, and quick to reward.

• All things may corrupt when minds are prone to evil.

• Although they possess enough, and more than enough, still they yearn for more.

• An evil life is a kind of death.

• As for courage and will— we cannot measure how much of each lies within us, we can only trust there will be sufficient to carry through trials which may lie ahead.

• At times it is folly to hasten at other times, to delay. The wise do everything in its proper time.

• Bear patiently with a rival.

• Courage conquers all things: it even gives strength to the body.

• Cunning leads to knavery. It is but a step from one to the other, and that very slippery. Only lying makes the difference; add that to cunning, and it is knavery.

• Daring is not safe against daring men.

• Dignity and love do not blend well, nor do they continue long together.
  • Variants: Majesty and love do not consort well together, nor do they dwell in the same place.
    Love and dignity cannot share the same abode.

• Either do not attempt at all, or go through with it.

• Endure and persist; this pain will turn to good by and by.

• Enhance and intensify one's vision of that synthesis of truth and beauty which is the highest and deepest reality.

• Envy aims very high.

• Everyone wishes that the man whom he fears would perish.

• Everything comes gradually and at its appointed hour.

• First appearance deceives many.

• First thing every morning before you arise say out loud, "I believe," three times.

• Audentem Forsque Venusque iuvat
  • Fortune and love favor the brave
    • Ars Amatoria, I.608

• Gifts, believe me, captivate both men and Gods, Jupiter himself was won over and appeased by gifts.

• Had I not sinned what would there be for you to pardon. My fate has given you the opportunity for mercy.

• Happy are those who dare courageously to defend what they love.

• He who can believe himself well, will be well.

• How little is the promise of the child fulfilled in the man.

• I attempt an arduous task; but there is no worth in that which is not a difficult achievement.

• If you would marry suitably, marry your equal.

• In an easy matter, anybody can be eloquent.

• In our leisure we reveal what kind of people we are.

• Let me tell you I am better acquainted with you for a long absence, as men are with themselves for a long affliction: absence does but hold off a friend, to make one see him the truer.

• Love is a driver, bitter and fierce if you fight and resist him, Easy-going enough once you acknowledge his power.

• Medicine sometimes snatches away health, sometimes gives it.

• Minds that are ill at ease are agitated by both hope and fear.

• My hopes are not always realized, but I always hope.

• No man can purchase his virtue too dear, for it is the only thing whose value must ever increase with the price it has cost us. Our integrity is never worth so much as when we have parted with our all to keep it.

• Our minds are circumscribed by our immediate reality but we stop short at the thought of it.

• Overlook our deeds, since you know that crime was absent from our inclination.

• People are slow to claim confidence in undertakings of magnitude.

• Suppressed grief suffocates, it rages within the breast, and is forced to multiply its strength.

• Tears at times have all the weight of speech.

• The burden which is well borne becomes light.

• The high-spirited man may indeed die, but he will not stoop to meanness. Fire, though it may be quenched, will not become cool.
  • From Hitopadesha [1]

• The lamp burns bright when wick and oil are clean.

• There is more refreshment and stimulation in a nap, even of the briefest, than in all the alcohol ever distilled.

• There is no such thing as pure pleasure; some anxiety always goes with it.

• This also— that I live, I consider a gift of God. [Tristia ("Sorrows"), Book 1, Poem 1, line 20. Id quoque, quod vivam, munus habere dei. Written by Ovid after his banishment to Tomi, near mouth of Danube on Black Sea, in AD 9]

• Those things that nature denied to human sight, she revealed to the eyes of the soul.

• Cernis ut ignavum corrumpant otia corpus
  ut capiant vitium, ni moveantur, aquae
  • You see how inactivity spoils an idle body, how water acquires a taint unless it is in motion.
    • Letters from the Black Sea, I.v. lines 5-6; Arthur Leslie Wheeler translation

• Time is generally the best doctor.

• Time, motion and wine cause sleep.

• We two are to ourselves a crowd.

• What is deservedly suffered must be borne with calmness, but when the pain is unmerited, the grief is resistless.

• What is now reason was formerly impulse or instinct.
  • Quod nunc ratio est, impetus ante fuit, Remedia Amoris, line 10

• What is without periods of rest will not endure.

• What makes men indifferent to their wives is that they can see them when they please.

• Whether they give or refuse, it delights women just the same to have been asked.

• Whether you call my heart affectionate, or you call it womanish: I confess, that to my misfortune, it is soft.

• Why should I go into details, we have nothing that is not perishable except what our hearts and our intellects endows us with.

Ovid Quote in Dispute

I'm confused as to how one of the cited texts--"No species remains constant: the great renovator of matter, Nature, endlessly fashions new forms from old" is attributed to Ovid (and, in particular, to a translation of his Metamorphoses by Peter Green). I checked Amazon and his biography on Wikipedia and found no mention of his work on the Metamorphoses--let alone a translation of one under his name.

Can anyone verify, then, whether Ovid wrote it or not?

Any,um, response?

It is from Ovidius; to be found in Book XV of Metamorphoses in Latin as:
Nec species sua cuique manet, rerumque novatrix ex aliis alias reparat natura figuras: nec perit in toto quicquam, mihi credite, mundo, sed variat faciemque novat, nascique vocatur incipere esse aliud, quam quod fuit ante, morique desinere illud idem. cum sint huc forsitan illa, haec translata illuc, summa tamen omnia constant.
Of Peter Green and the English translation I know naught. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 11:18, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Barlett Quotations-A Question about their "Source"

I happened to glance that a lot of Ovid's quotes--particularly those coordinated to his Metamorphoses--were taken from Barlett's "Familiar Quotations."

Does anyone know whether Barlett himself used any of the existing translations of works by Ovid, Aeschylus, and so forth? Did he ever include a bibliography listing or referencing those translations in the first few editions of his "Familiar Quotations"?

Entry without translation

• Quod refugit, multae cupiunt; odere quod instat
  • Ars Amatoria; Book I, line 717

IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 22:55, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Dubious translation

I have removed the phrase It is annoying to be honest to no purpose from the main page.

It is found in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 15th ed. (1980), p. 114 [2] as a translation of Letters from the Black Sea II.iii, line 14

The Latin however reads "gratis paenitet esse probum, which is translated better as "doing good for free is regretted", as A.S. Kline translates it; or as "unrewarded uprightness brings them regret", as Arthur Leslie Wheeler translates.

It seems to me the phrase "It is annoying to be honest to no purpose" is not a valid translation and therefore not attributable to Ovid. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 17:54, 24 March 2017 (UTC)