“As the blessings of health and fortune have a beginning, so they must also find an end.”
As quoted in The Cyclopaedia of Practical Quotations: English and Latin (1894) edited by J. K. Hoyt and Anna L. Ward, p. 508
Context: As the blessings of health and fortune have a beginning, so they must also find an end. Everything rises but to fall, and increases but to decay.
“But experience has shown that to be true which Appius says in his verses, that every man is the architect of his own fortune.”
Sed res docuit id verum esse, quod in carminibus Appius ait, fabrum esse suae quemque fortunae.
I.i.2
Epistulae ad Caesarem senem
“And, indeed, if the intellectual ability of kings and magistrates were exerted to the same degree in peace as in war, human affairs would be more orderly and settled, and you would not see governments shifted from hand to hand, and things universally changed and confused. For dominion is easily secured by those qualities by which it was at first obtained. But when sloth has introduced itself in the place of industry, and covetousness and pride in that of moderation and equity, the fortune of a state is altered together with its morals; and thus authority is always transferred from the less to the more deserving.”
Quod si regum atque imperatorum animi virtus in pace ita ut in bello valeret, aequabilius atque constantius sese res humanae haberent neque aliud alio ferri neque mutari ac misceri omnia cerneres. Nam imperium facile iis artibus retinetur, quibus initio partum est. Verum ubi pro labore desidia, pro continentia et aequitate lubido atque superbia invasere, fortuna simul cum moribus inmutatur. Ita imperium semper ad optumum quemque a minus bono transferetur.
Source: Bellum Catilinae (c. 44 BC), Chapter II, sections 3-6; translation by Rev. John Selby Watson