263 Quotes by Tacitus

In private enterprises men may advance or recede, whereas they who aim at empire have no alternative between the highest success and utter downfall.

Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.

The love of fame is the last weakness which even the wise resign.

Bodies are slow of growth, but are rapid in their dissolution. [Lat., Corpora lente augescent, cito extinguuntur.]

Seek to make a person blush for their guilt rather than shed their blood.

They even say that an altar dedicated to Ulysses , with the addition of the name of his father, Laertes , was formerly discovered on the same spot, and that certain monuments and tombs with Greek inscriptions, still exist on the borders of Germany and Rhaetia .

Crime, once exposed, has no refuge but in audacity.

The Germans themselves I should regard as aboriginal, and not mixed at all with other races through immigration or intercourse. For in former times, it was not by land but on shipboard that those who sought to emigrate would arrive; and the boundless and, so to speak, hostile ocean beyond us,is seldom entered by a sail from our world.

Posterity will pay everyone their due.