“I see better things, and approve, but I follow worse.”
Video meliora, proboque, deteriora sequor.
Book VII, 20
Metamorphoses (Transformations)
“And it is a smaller thing to suffer the punishment than to have deserved it.”
Estque pati poenam quam meruisse minus.
I, i, 62; translation by Arthur Leslie Wheeler
Epistulae ex Ponto (Letters From the Black Sea)
“Habit makes all things bearable.”
Quod male fers, adsuesce, feres bene.
Book II, line 647 (tr. James Michie)
Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love)
“Love is a thing full of anxious fears.”
Res est solliciti plena timoris amor.
I, 12
Heroides (The Heroines)
“For those things which were done either by our fathers, or ancestors, and in which we ourselves had no share, we can scarcely call our own.”
Nam genus et proavos et quae non fecimus ipsi,
Vix ea nostra voco.
Metamorphoses (Transformations)
“Time, the devourer of all things.”
Tempus edax rerum.
Book XV, 234
Metamorphoses (Transformations)
“Thus all things are but altered, nothing dies.”
Omnia mutantur, nihil interit.
Book XV, 165 (as translated by John Dryden); on the transmigration of souls.
Metamorphoses (Transformations)