Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Petronius, fully Gaius Petronius Arbiter Gasus , aka Petronius Arbiter NULL

Roman Writer, Courtier, Probable Author of the Satyricon

"Heaven is equally distant everywhere."

"Love despised has strength."

"The sun shines upon us all alike."

"Stick to one thing at a time."

"Our eyes deceive us."

"A physician is nothing but a consoler of the mind."

"A beggar is safe in risking anything."

"Nothing is falser than people's preconceptions and ready-made opinions; nothing is sillier than their sham morality."

"All the world practices the art of acting."

"The mind still longs for what it has missed, and loses itself in the contemplation of the past."

"Beauty and wisdom are rarely conjoined."

"We trained hard—but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we were reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while actually producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.[validity of quote disputed]"

"One good turn deserves another."

"A huge dog, tied by a chain, was painted on the wall and over it was written in capital letters ?Beware of the dog.?"

"A man who is always ready to believe what is told him will never do well."

"Alas! worse every day! this colony grows backward like the tail of a calf."

"Almost the whole world are players."

"Can't you see that I'm only advising you to beg yourself not to be so dumb?"

"Education is a treasure."

"Find here what each desires: men's pleasure goes - Strange ways: one pulls a thorn and one a rose."

"Everyone will find what he's looking for. Nothing pleases everyone: this man gathers thorns, that one roses."

"All those who are left legacies in my will?will obtain my bequests only on one condition, that they cut my body in pieces and eat it before the eyes of the citizens?You must merely shield your eyes, and imagine that what you have swallowed is not human entrails but ten million sesterces."

"He?s gone to join the majority [the dead]."

"I believe that school makes complete fools of our young men, because they see and hear nothing of ordinary life there"

"I have cut my leg with my own adze."

"I myself have seen with my own eyes the Sybil hanging in a bottle at Cumae. And when the little boys asked her Sybil, what do you want? she said, I want to die."

"I said everything that a painful swelling in one's libido tells one to say."

"I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl of Cumae hanging in a jar, and when the boys said to her, ?Sibyl, what do you want?? She replied,? I want to die.?"

"For I myself saw the Sibyl indeed at Cumae with my own eyes hanging in a jar; and when the boys used to say to her, "Sibyl, what do you want?" she replied, 'I want to die.""

"He is pepper, not a man."

"He that has a penny in his purse, is worth a penny: Have and you shall be esteemed."

"He has gone over to the majority."

"Inflated bottles walk. We are less than for the fly, flies, however, that a power to have, we will not, we are of more value than the bubbles."

"Let us together closely lie and kiss, There is no labor, no shame in this: This hath pleased, doth please, and long will please, never, Can this decay, but is beginning ever."

"Like master, like man."

"Not worth his salt."

"Outward beauty is not enough; to be attractive a woman must use words, wit, playfulness, sweet-talk, and laughter to transcend the gifts of Nature."

"It is fear that first brought gods into the world."

"Let none of us are born perfect, it is."

"The imagination will not perform until it has been flooded by a vast torrent of reading."

"Outward looks are not enough, beauty is not common stuff-of merriment it is compact, playful grace in every act, witty laughter, laughing wit: these are things that go with it, these surpass the simple graces in beautiful and silly faces. Art is beauty; and I say: take the lovely fool away!-If she strips from foot to head and doesn't ask me into bed."

"Parents deserve reproof when they refuse to benefit their children by severe discipline."

"The mind wishes for what it has missed, and occupies itself with retrospective contemplation."

"The studied spontaneity of Horace."

"To strive with the winds."

"The pot boils badly."

"The pleasure of the act of love is gross and brief and brings loathing after it."

"We are not more than a bubble."

"We know that you are mad with much learning."

"What power has law where only money rules."