Caligula Best Quotes & Sayings

Soon dinner will run into bed-time, and we shall all eat reclining like the ancient Romans
about whose digestion, you know, I have often wondered. Whether a dose of rhubabrb might have made a difference to Nero or Caligula is a question you might ponder, my dear, next time you go through your Tacitus. — Jude Morgan

Nineteenth-century liberalism had assumed that man was a rational being who operated naturally according to his own best interests, so that in the end, what was reasonable would prevail. On this principle liberals defended extension of the suffrage toward the goal of one man, one vote. But a rise in literacy and in the right to vote, as the event proved, did nothing to increase common sense in politics. The mob that is moved by waving the bloody shirt, that decides elections in response to slogans - Free Silver, Hang the Kaiser, Two Cars in Every Garage - is not exhibiting any greater political sense than Marie Antoinette, who said, "Let them eat cake," or Caligula, who made his horse a consul. The common man proved no wiser than the decadent aristocrat. He has not shown in public affairs the innate wisdom which democracy presumed he possessed. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Please stop trifling. — Albert Camus

So much for the Emperor; the rest of this history must deal with the Monster.
- IV:22 — Suetonius

CALIGULA: I'm the only true artist Rome has known - the only one, believe me - to match his inspiration with his deeds.
CHEREA: That's only a matter of having the power.
CALIGULA: Quite true. Other artists create to compensate for their lack of power. I don't need to make a work of art; I live it. — Albert Camus

You know what's amusing?
How people in this so-called American Liberty Movement constantly forward ideas as if nobody had ever thought of them before.
If any of these fucktards had ever read Pliny, Cicero, Plutarch or Suetonius, they would know that nearly all political ideas were old news by the time of the Emperor Caligula.
The American educational system is officially shit as far as I can tell. — Sienna McQuillen

I've always liked to read about extremely wealthy people, especially when they are crazy (like Howard Hughes or Caligula.) While writing this book I did a lot of fun research on robber barons like Rockefeller and Morgan. But the most helpful stuff came from studying royal families and mad emperors. The best book I read was probably A King's Own Story, which is the memoir of Edward VIII. Also, anything about Ivan the Terrible or Ted Turner. — Simon Rich

Animals
fattened for your for your arena suffered less
than you in dying-yours the lawlessness
of something simple that has lost its law,
my namesake, and the last Caligula. — Robert Lowell

Caligula wished that the Roman people had but one neck that he might cut it off, and as I read this letter I am afraid that for a moment I was capable of wishing the same thing concerning the laboring class of America. — Edward Bellamy

Being is good, but getting rich is better ... If the gods had only the riches of men's adoration, they would be as poor as poor Caligula. — Albert Camus

I scorn their hatred, if they do but fear me — Caligula

It is idle to complain that a society is infringing a moral code intended to make people behave like St. Francis of Assisi if the society retorts that it does not wish to behave like St. Francis, and considers it more natural and right to behave like the Emperor Caligula. When there is a genuine conflict of opinion, it is necessary to go behind the moral code and appeal to the natural law - to prove, that is, at the bar of experience, that St. Francis does in fact enjoy a freer truth to essential human nature than Caligula, and that a society of Caligulas is more likely to end in catastrophe than a society of Franciscans. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Would that the Roman people had but one neck! — Caligula

Executions were meant as an exercise in frightfulness according to the theory developed by the Emperor Caligula: "Oderint dum metuant" (Let them hate us as long as they fear us). — Barbara W. Tuchman

This is the worst administration since Caligula. — John Dingell

That the crowd always likes a holiday is a common saying, but when the whole year becomes one long holiday, and nobody has time for attending to his business, and pleasure becomes compulsory, then it is a different matter. — Robert Graves

Caligula - And what has Nature done for you?

Scipio - It consoles me for not being. Ceasar.

Caligula - Really? And do you think Nature could console me for being Ceasar?

Scipio - Why not? Nature has healed worse wounds than that. — Albert Camus

No chord in populism reverberates more strongly than the notion that the robust common sense of an unstained outsider is the best medicine for an ailing polity. Caligula doubtless got big cheers from the plebs when he installed his horse as proconsul. — Alexander Cockburn

As for Gaius, he has no more chance of becoming emperor than of riding a horse dry-shod across the Gulf of Baiae. — Suetonius

A Caligula, or a Yuri Vorbarra, can rule a long time, while the best men hesitate to do what is necessary to stop him, and the worst ones take advantage. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Mister Cameron - I have read the unexpurgated Ovid, the love poems of Sappho, the Decameron in the original, and a great many texts in Greek and Latin histories that were not though fit for proper gentlemen to read, much less proper ladies. I know in precise detail what Caligula did to, and with, his sisters, and I can quote it to you in Latin or in my own translation if you wish. I am interested in historical truth, and truth in history is often unpleasant and distasteful to those of fine sensibility. I frankly doubt that you will produce anything to shock me. — Mercedes Lackey

All she remembered was that Caligula had planned to torture his wife to find out why he was so devoted to her. What was David's excuse, she wondered. — Edward St. Aubyn

SO YOU ARE THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO REJECT MY DIVINITY! - Caligula, 37 CE. — Joseph Shellim

Remember that Caligula was not a cause, he was an effect. — Stan Goff

I fell in love with Caligula and now I'm married to Calvin. — Jean Stafford

The unwholesome-looking little moral agent of destruction exulted silently in the possession of personal prestige, keeping in check this man armed with the defensive mandate of a menaced society. More fortunate than Caligula, who wished that the Roman Senate had only one head for the better satisfaction of his cruel lust, he beheld in that one man all the forces he had set at defiance: the force of law, property, oppression, and injustice. He beheld all his enemies and fearlessly confronted them all in a supreme satisfaction of his vanity. They stood perplexed before him as if before a dreadful portent. He gloated inwardly over the chance of this meeting affirming his superiority over all the multitude of mankind. — Joseph Conrad

Another leading senator that I degraded was Caligula's horse Incitatus who was to have become Consul three years later. I wrote to the Senate that I had no complaints to make against the private morals of this senator or his capacity for the tasks that had hitherto been assigned to him, but that he no longer had the necessary financial qualifications. For I had cut the pension awarded him by Caligula to the daily rations of a cavalry horse, dismissed his grooms and put him into an ordinary stable where the manger was of wood, not ivory, and the walls were whitewashed, not covered with frescoes. I did not, however, separate him from his wife, the mare Penelope: that would have been unjust. — Robert Graves

Let them hate me, so long as they fear me! — Caligula

So this is the boom, eh?" I said. "Not exactly Scott Fitzgerald, is it?" "I'll tell you what it's like," he said glumly. "It's like being in Caligula's Rome, and everyone around you's having an orgy, and you're the mug stuck looking after the horse." He pulled heavily on his cigarette. "The whole thing'll come crashing down," he said bleakly, "and all anyone'll have done is eaten a lot of expensive cheese. — Paul Murray

-We live in Rome, he says, turning his face to the room again,
-Caligula's Rome, with a new circus of vulgar bestialized suffering in the newspapers every morning. The masses, the fetid masses, he says, bringing all his weight to his feet.-How can they even suspect a self who can do more, when they live under absolutely no obligation. There are so few beautiful things in the world ... — William Gaddis

...the guy might be a cold-blooded amoral sadistic killer and a cartload of tiles short of a watertight roof, but there was nothing wrong with his intelligence. [Caligula in Marcus Corvinus's eyes] — David Wishart

But is life really worth so much? Let us examine this; it's a different inquiry. We will offer no solace for so desolate a prison house; we will encourage no one to endure the overlordship of butchers. We shall rather show that in every kind of slavery, the road of freedom lies open. I will say to the man to whom it befell to have a king shoot arrows at his dear ones [Prexaspes], and to him whose master makes fathers banquet on their sons' guts [Harpagus]: 'What are you groaning for, fool?... Everywhere you look you find an end to your sufferings. You see that steep drop-off? It leads down to freedom. You see that ocean, that river, that well? Freedom lies at its bottom. You see that short, shriveled, bare tree? Freedom hangs from it.... You ask, what is the path to freedom? Any vein in your body. — Seneca.

I don't care if they respect me so long as they fear me. — Caligula

Then there was David, lording it up at Buckingham Palace, thinking he was king of the shit heap. That guy was definitely nuts, like every dictator that had gone before him. Nero, Caligula, Henry the Eighth, Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Margaret Thatcher, Colonel Gaddafi, that crazy North Korean bastard who was in Team America, Kim Jong whatever. — Charlie Higson

Channel 4 are a great bunch of people to work with and the crew are lovely. Working at ITV was like being in the court of Caligula. — Paul O'Grady

Most people imagine that a man suffers because out of the blue, Death snatches away the woman he loves. But his real suffering is less futile; it comes from the discovery that grief, too, cannot last. Even grief is vanity! — Albert Camus

If the life of natural things, millions of years old, does not seem sacred to us, then what can be sacred? Human vanity alone? Contempt for the natural world is contempt for life. The domination of nature leads to the domination of human nature. Anything becomes permissible. We return once more to the nightmare cultures of Hitler, Stalin, King Philip II, Montezuma, Caligula, Heliogabalus, Herod, the Pharaohs; Christ sacrificed himself in vain. — Edward Abbey

Letter from Philippus of Athens to Lucius Annaeus Seneca: Yet the Empire of Rome that [Octavius] created has endured the harshness of a Tiberius, the monstrous cruelty of a Caligula, and the ineptness of a Claudius. And now our new Emperor is one whom you tutored as a boy, and to whom you remain close in his new authority; let us be thankful for the fact that he will rule in the light of your wisdom and virtue, and let us pray to the gods that, under Nero, Rome will at last fulfill the dream of Octavius Caesar. — John Edward Williams