Death Cicero Quotes & Sayings

No one could ever meet death for his country without the hope of immortality. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Some men make a womanish complaint that it is a great misfortune to die before our time. I would ask what time? Is it that of Nature? But she, indeed, has lent us life, as we do a sum of money, only no certain day is fixed for payment. What reason then to complain if she demands it at pleasure, since it was on this condition that you received it. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

I will adhere to the counsels of good men, although misfortune and death should be the consequence. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

I have the better right to indulgence herein, because my devotion to letters strengthens my oratorical powers, and these, such as they are, have never failed my friends in their hour of peril. Yet insignificant though these powers may seem to be, I fully realize from what source I draw all that is highest in them. Had I not persuaded myself from my youth up, thanks to the moral lessons derived from a wide reading, that nothing is to be greatly sought after in this life save glory and honour, and that in their quest all bodily pains and all dangers of death or exile should be lightly accounted, I should never have borne for the safety of you all the burnt of many a bitter encounter, or bared my breast to the daily onsets of abandoned persons. All literature, all philosophy, all history, abounds with incentives to noble action, incentives which would be buried in black darkness were the light of the written word not flashed upon them. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

The nearer I approach death the more I feel like one who is in sight of land at last and is about to anchor in one's home port after a long voyage. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

The swan is not without cause dedicated to Apollo, because foreseeing his happiness in death, he dies with singing and pleasure. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Life without learning is death. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Death approaches, which is always impending like the stone over Tantalus: then comes superstition with which he who is imbued can never have peace of mind.
[Lat., Accedit etiam mors, quae quasi saxum Tantalo semper impendit: tum superstitio, qua qui est imbutus quietus esse numquam potest.] — Marcus Tullius Cicero

The process, indeed, of nature is this: that just in the same manner as our birth was the beginning of things with us, so death will be the end; and as we were noways concerned with anything before we were born, so neither shall we be after we are dead. And — Marcus Tullius Cicero

The name of peace is sweet, and the thing itself is beneficial, but there is a great difference between peace and servitude. Peace is freedom in tranquillity, servitude is the worst of all evils, to be resisted not only by war, but even by death. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

There is, I know not how, a certain presage, as it were, of a future existence; and this takes the deepest root, and is most discoverable, in the greatest geniuses and most exalted souls. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

I do not wish to die: but I care not if I were dead.
[Lat., Emori nolo: sed me esse mortuum nihil aestimo.] — Marcus Tullius Cicero

At first I thought I would never recover from Cicero's death. But time wipes out everything, even grief. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that grief is almost entirely a question of perspective. For the first few years I used to sigh and think, 'Well, he would still be in his sixties now,' and then a decade later, with surprise, 'My goodness, he would be seventy-five,' but nowadays I think, 'Well, he would be long since dead in any case, so what does it matter how he died in comparison with how he lived? — Robert Harris

Nor do I regret that I have lived, since I have so lived that I think I was not born in vain, and I quit life as if it were an inn, not a home. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

When time and need require, we should resist with all our might, and prefer death to slavery and disgrace. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

The last day does not bring extinction to us, but change of place.
[Lat., Supremus ille dies non nostri extinctionem sed commutationem affert loci.] — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Death is dreadful to the man whose all is extinguished with his life; but not to him whose glory never can die. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

I cheerfully quit from life as if it were an inn, not a home; for Nature has given us a hostelry in which to sojourn, not to abide. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

The whole life of a philosopher is the meditation of his death. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Would I fortify myself against the fear of death, it must be at the expense of Seneca: would I extract consolation for myself or my friend, I must borrow it from Cicero. I might have found it in myself, had I been trained to make use of my own reason. I do not like this relative and mendicant understanding; for though we could become learned by other men's learning, a man can never be wise but by his own wisdom. — Michel De Montaigne

The recovery of freedom is so splendid a thing that we must not shun even death when seeking to recover it. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Father and son had been on poor terms (even Cicero acknowledged this) and it was arranged for the young man to be accused of parricide. This was among the most serious offenses in the charge book and was one of the few crimes to attract the death penalty under Roman law. The method of execution was extremely unpleasant. An ancient legal authority described what took place: According to the custom of our ancestors it was established that the parricide should be beaten with blood-red rods, sewn in a leather sack together with a dog [an animal despised by Greeks and Romans], a cock [like the parricide devoid of all feelings of affection], a viper [whose mother was supposed to die when it was born], and an ape [a caricature of a man], and the sack thrown into the depths of the sea or a river. — Anthony Everitt

Just as apples when unripe are torn from trees, but when ripe and mellow drop down, so it is violence that takes life from young men, ripeness from old. This ripeness is so delightful to me that, as I approach nearer to death, I seem, as it were, to be sighting land, and to be coming to port at last after a long voyage. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

He reaches for his pen. He yawns and puts it down and picks it up again. I shall be found dead at my desk, he thinks, like the poet Petrarch. The poet wrote many unsent letters: he wrote to Cicero, who died twelve hundred years before he was born. He wrote to Homer, who possibly never even existed; but I, I have enough to do with Lord Lisle, and the fish traps, and the Emperor's galleons tossing on the Middle Sea. Between one dip of the pen, Petrarch writes, 'between one dip of the pen and the next, the time passes: and I hurry, I drive myself, and I speed towards death. We are always dying - I while I write, you while you read, and others while they listen or block their ears; they are all dying. — Hilary Mantel

The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

If I am mistaken in my opinion that the human soul is immortal, I willingly err; nor would I have this pleasant error extorted from me; and if, as some minute philosophers suppose, death should deprive me of my being, I need not fear the raillery of those pretended philosophers when they are no more. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

To study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one's self to die. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

For a courageous man cannot die dishonorably, a man who has attained the consulship cannot die before his time, a philosopher cannot die wretchedly. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

I have no interest in dying.
But I have to. I have to care one day about things that don't matter to me. — Noah Cicero

Things external to her may have their own weight and dimension: but within inside us she gives them such measures as she wills: death is terrifying to Cicero, desirable to Cato, indifferent to Socrates. Health, consciousness, authority, knowledge, beauty and their opposites doff their garments as they enter the soul and receive new vestments, coloured with qualities of her own choosing: brown or green; light or dark; bitter or sweet, deep or shallow, as it pleases each of the individual souls, who have not agreed together on the truth of their practices, rules or ideas. Each soul is Queen in her own state. So let us no longer seek excuses from the external qualities of anything, the responsibility lies within ourselves. Our good or our bad depends on us alone. So let us make our offertories and our vows to ourselves not to Fortune: she has no power over our behaviour, on the contrary our souls drag Fortune in their train and mould her to their own idea. — Michel De Montaigne

Death is not natural for a state as it is for a human being, for whom death is not only necessary, but frequently even desirable. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

I depart from life as from an inn, and not as from my home.
[Lat., Ex vita discedo, tanquam ex hospitio, non tanquam ex domo.] — Marcus Tullius Cicero

To some extent I liken slavery to death. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Death darkens his eyes, and unplumes his wings, Yet the sweetest song is the last he sings: Live so, my Love, that when death shall come, Swan-like and sweet it may waft thee home. — Marcus Tullius Cicero