Quotes & Sayings About Cincinnatus

Liberty does not exist where rights are on one side and power on the other. To be liberty, rights must be armed with vital powers. A people cannot be free who do not participate in the control of the government which operates upon them. — Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II

The center of all my enjoyments is the home wherein are my wife and children, and I have no wish to wander out from that home in pursuit of any pleasures that the world presents. — Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II

And yet I have been fashioned so painstakingly,' thought Cincinnatus as he wept in the darkness. 'The curvature of my spine has been calculated so well, so mysteriously. I feel, tightly rolled up in my calves, so many miles that I could yet run in my lifetime. My head is so comfortable.' A clock struck a half, pertaining to some unknown hour. (Invitation to a beheading) — Vladimir Nabokov

What are these hopes, and who is this savior?" "Imagination," replied Cincinnatus. — Vladimir Nabokov

Voters have soaked up a noggin full of negativity over the last twenty years, with an economy we had to bring back from collapse, plus terrorist attacks and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I don't want to belabor these points, but your listeners know what I'm talking about. I think the antidote is to appreciate what we have, enjoy where we live, and make a positive contribution to our communities. My Cracker Pride campaign is balanced by the spirit of Cincinnatus. He was a farmer and Roman general who was twice made dictator. And he had the forbearance to resign as dictator as soon as he had vanquished Rome's enemies. He became a civic ideal for good leadership. That's the spirit I want in my district and in my campaign. - Veda Rabadel, The Tea & Crackers Campaign. — Peter Prasad

Love of country produces among men such examples as Cincinnatus, Alfred, Washington
pure, unselfish, symmetrical; among women, Vittoria Colonna, Madame Roland, Charlotte Corday, Jeanne Darc
romantic, devoted, marvelous. — Alphonse De Lamartine

It is a law woven into the nature of man, attested by history, by science, by literature and art, and by dally experience, that strength of mind and force of character are the supreme rulers of human affairs. — Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II

I think it eminently proper that a president should retire from active politics, and equally proper that he should be able to live in quiet independence. — Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II

I cannot write a speech. The pen is an extinguisher upon my mind and a torture to my nerves. I am the most habitual extemporaneous speaker that I have ever known. — Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II

Cincinnatus was ploughing his four jugera of land upon the Vaticanian Hill, the same that are still known as the Quintian Meadows, when the messenger brought him the dictatorship, finding him, the tradition says, stripped to the work. — Pliny The Elder

I formed, in early life, two purposes to which I have inflexibly adhered, under some very strong pressure from warm personal friends. They were, first, never to be a second in a duel; and, second, never to go security for another man's debts. — Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II

There is a long and honorable tradition of citizens in service to their nation that goes back at least as far as Cincinnatus, the Roman citizen who, more than once answered his country's call, then returned to his farm and his family and his work. — Tom Clancy

In 2012 there was a megafoolish, if well-funded, effort by a group called Americans Elect to raise an independent Cincinnatus to run for president via an Internet draft. It flopped, spectacularly. — Joe Klein

What anguish! Cincinnatus, what anguish! What stone anguish, Cincinnatus - the merciless bong of the clock, and the obese spider, and the yellow walls, and the roughness of the black wool blanket. The skim on the chocolate. Pluck it with two fingers at the very center and snatch it whole from the surface, no longer a flat covering, but a wrinkled brown little skirt. The liquid is tepid underneath, sweetish and stagnant. Three slices of toast with tortoise shell burns. A round pat of butter embossed with the monogram of the director. What anguish, Cincinnatus, how many crumbs in the bed! — Vladimir Nabokov

Cincinnati attracted its first permanent white settlers by flatboat in 1788. It took its name from the Society of Cincinnati, an organization of Revolutionary officers. That name came from Cincinnatus, the Roman farmer and general. — Bill Dedman

The class's favorite
book was Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading. In this novel, Nabokov differentiates
Cincinnatus C., his imaginative and lonely hero, from those around him through his
originality in a society where uniformity is not only the norm but also the law. — Azar Nafisi

This night the password was silence, and the soldier at the gate responded with silence to Cincinnatus' silence and let him pass; likewise at all the other gates. — Vladimir Nabokov

When a nation has just emerged from the throes of a great civil warfare, where section was arrayed against section, class against class, two things are to be done: First, the work of reconstruction is to be effected; Secondly, a willingness for the proper acceptance of the issue's decision is to be created. — Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II

The nations of Europe constitute a federative league, a commonwealth of nations which, though it has no central head, is so intimate and elaborate as to subject the action, and sometimes even the internal affairs, of each to surveillance and intervention on the part of all the others. — Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II

In accordance with the law the death sentence was announced to Cincinnatus C. in a whisper. — Vladimir Nabokov

The very first act of the Confederate Government was to send commissioners to Washington to make terms of peace, and to establish relations of amity between the two sections. — Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II