Tao Te Ching
Virgil
(Publius Vergilius Maro)
70 – 19 BCE
“The most lovable of Romans” and its greatest poet, advocate/inspiration/teacher for small farmers, Dante's guide through hell and purgatory, considered a great magician, seer, and saint as well as the embodiment of human knowledge and experience; Virgil began life as a poor farmer and once had to swim for his life to escape soldiers. Given patronage by Augustus he wrote the Aeneid that became the Roman national epic and standard text for school curricula after Augustus refused Virgil’s dying wish to have it burned. For hundreds of years his poems were opened at random as an oracle for insight into uncertainty and to solve problems.
Eras
Chinese
Western Han (206 BCE – 9 CE)Sources
Unlisted Sources
Eclogues (37 BCE)
Georgics (29 BC)
Suetonius
Quotes by Virgil (26 quotes)
“Do the gods light this fire in our hearts or does each man's mad desire become his god?”
from Aeneid
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“Ah, merciless Love, is there any length to which you cannot force the human heart to go?”
from Aeneid
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“What a tale he's told, what a bitter bowl of war he's drunk to the dregs.”
from Aeneid
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“No other evil we know is faster than Rumor, small and timid at first, then borne on a light air, she flits over ground while hiding her head on a cloud-top.”
from Aeneid
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“How lucky, if they know their happiness are farmers—more than lucky, they for whom, far from the clash of arms, the earth herself, most fair in dealing, freely lavishes an easy livelihood.”
from Georgics (29 BC)
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“I too must attempt a way by which I can raise myself above the ground, and soar triumphant through the lips of men.”
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“the descent to hell is easy (facilis descensus Averno)”
from Aeneid
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“
* Trust not too much to that enchanting face;
Beauty's a charm, but soon the charm will pass.
”
from Eclogues (37 BCE)
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“What madness has seized you?... Everyone is dragged on by their favorite pleasure.
”
from Eclogues (37 BCE)
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“
Happy the man, who, studying nature's laws,
Thro' known effects can trace the secret cause.”
from Georgics (29 BC)
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“Happy the man, who, studying nature's laws,
Thro' known effects can trace the secret cause.”
from Georgics (29 BC)
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“In youth alone, unhappy mortals live;
But, ah! the mighty bliss is fugitive:
Discolored sickness, anxious labor, come,
And age, and death's inexorable doom.”
from Georgics (29 BC)
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“Love is lord of all, and is in all the same.”
from Georgics (29 BC)
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“Endure the hardships of your present statel Live, and reserve yourselves for better fate... Endure the hardships of your present state, live, and reserve yourselves for better fate... Yield not to misfortunes, but advance all the more boldly against them.”
from Aeneid
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“The gates of hell are open night and day;
Smooth the descent, and easy is the way:
But to return, and view the cheerful skies,
In this the task and mighty labor lies.”
from Aeneid
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“To what extremes won't you compel our hearts, you accursed lust for gold?”
from Aeneid
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“They can because they think they can... Fortune favors the bold.”
from Aeneid
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“The only hope for the doomed is no hope at all”
from Aeneid
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“Fickle and changeable always is woman.”
from Aeneid
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“Go no further down the road of hatred.”
from Aeneid
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“The attempts to heal enflame the fever more.”
from Aeneid
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“It is easier to steal the club of Hercules than a line from Homer.”
from Suetonius
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Quotes about Virgil (10 quotes)
“Virgil loved rural ease, and, far from harm,
Maecenas fix'd him in a neat, snug farm,
Where he might free from trouble pass his days
In his own way, and pay his rent in praise.
Charles Churchill,”
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“in the sense in which a poet is a philosopher... Virgil is the greatest philosopher of ancient Rome... among all authors of classical antiquity, one for whom the world made sense, for whom it had order and dignity, and for whom, as for no one before his time except the Hebrew prophets, history had meaning... he saw clearly both sides of every question—the case for the loser as well as the case for the winner.
T. S. Eliot, "”
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“Come where thou need not to learn from me,
For thou shalt, by thine own experience,
Be able in a professorial chair to lecture on this subject
Better than Virgil, while he was alive”
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“[Virgil—] That harmonious plagiary and miserable flatterer, whose cursed hexameters were drilled into me at Harrow.”
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“Virgil seems to have copied Greek models completely, imitating them slavishly and lifelessly, and so they appear as plagiarisms more or less devoid of spirit.”
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“This Fire is discerned in Virgil, but discerned as through a glass, reflected from Homer, more shining than fierce, but every where equal and constant.
”
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“Virgil's style is an inimitable mixture of the elaborately ornate, and the majestically plain and touching.”
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“[Virgil] The Delight of all Ages, and the Pattern of all Poets.
”
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“If you take from Virgil his diction and metre, what do you leave him?
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ”
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“O glory of the Latin race... Our divine poet....by whom our language showed forth all its power... of the other poets honor and light... You are my guide, you are my lord and teacher”
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