Ovid: Trending quotes (page 5)

“Let love steal in disguised as friendship.”
Intret amicitiae nomine tectus amor.

Ovid book Ars amatoria

Book I, line 720; translated by J. Lewis May in The Love Books of Ovid, 1930
Variant translation: Love will enter cloaked in friendship's name.
Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love)

Love , Friendship

“Say that I live, but in such wise that I would not live.”
Vivere me dices, sed sic ut vivere nolim

Ovid book Tristia

III, vii, 7; translation by Arthur Leslie Wheeler
Tristia (Sorrows)

“My soul would sing of metamorphoses.
But since, o gods, you were the source of these
bodies becoming other bodies, breathe
your breath into my book of changes: may
the song I sing be seamless as its way
weaves from the world's beginning to our day.”

Ovid Metamorphoses

Source: Metamorphoses

God , Books , World , Way

“It is right to learn even from an enemy.”

Ovid Metamorphoses

Fas est et ab hoste doceri.
Book IV, 428
Variant translations:
It is right to learn, even from the enemy.
Right it is to be taught even by the enemy.
It is right to be taught even by an enemy.
We can learn even from our enemies.
Metamorphoses (Transformations)

Learning

“Someday this pain will be useful to you”

Ovid

Hurtful , Pain

“Nitimur in vetitum" -- "We strive after the forbidden”

Ovid

“or that writing a poem you can read to no one
is like dancing in the dark.”

Ovid

Source: The Poems of Exile: Tristia and the Black Sea Letters

Reading , Dance

“Greatly he failed, but he had greatly dared.”

Ovid