Juvenal (c.60–c.140,) Latin name Decimus Junius Juvenalis, was the greatest of the Roman satirists. Juvenal’s sixteen verse Satires are a savage and rhetorical denunciation of Roman society under the emperor Domitian—the corruption of society and the idiocies and brutalities of humankind.
Nothing definite is known about Juvenal’s life. His time overlapped with an eventful epoch of Roman history, one in which the failings of the government and the depravities of society were especially grave and evident.
Satires is most bitter against foreigners—Greeks, Syrians, and particularly Jews who, he felt, caused the decline and fall of the old Roman way of life.
Juvenal’s vivid portrayals of Roman life inspired such satirists as Giovanni Boccaccio, Nicolas Boileau, and Lord Byron. The phrase “Juvenalian satire” still represents a critique of contemporary people and institutions in Juvenal’s style.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Juvenal
No one delights more in vengeance than a woman.
—Juvenal
Topics: Vengeance
When did reason ever direct our desires or our fears?
—Juvenal
Topics: Fear
The love of money grows as the money itself grows.
—Juvenal
Topics: Money
Vice can deceive under the shadow and guise of virtue.
—Juvenal
Topics: Vice
Few people can distinguish the genuinely good from the reverse.
—Juvenal
Topics: Character
Revenge is sweeter than life itself. So think fools.
—Juvenal
Topics: Revenge
In the present state of the world it is difficult not to write lampoons.
—Juvenal
Topics: Cynicism
Now we suffer the evils of a long peace; luxury more cruel than war broods over us and avenges a conquered world.
—Juvenal
Topics: Luxury, Wealth
Two things only the people anxiously desire, bread and the circus games.
—Juvenal
Topics: Sports
The greatest hardship of poverty is that it tends to make men ridiculous.
—Juvenal
Topics: Poverty
It is not easy for men to rise whose qualities are thwarted by poverty.
—Juvenal
Topics: Poverty
Your prayer must be for a sound mind in a sound body.
—Juvenal
Topics: Prayer, Health
It is a wretched thing to live on the fame of others.
—Juvenal
Topics: Fame
From where can your authority and license as a parent come from, when you who are old, do worse things?
—Juvenal
Topics: Parents, Parenting
The skilful class of flatterers praise the discourse of an ignorant friend and the face of a deformed one.
—Juvenal
Topics: Flattery
The short bloom of our brief and narrow life flies far away. While we are calling for flowers and wine and woman, old age is upon us.
—Juvenal
Topics: Age, Aging
Even savage animals can agree among themselves.
—Juvenal
Topics: Agreement
Yes, know thyself: in great concerns or small, be this thy care, for this, my friend, is all.
—Juvenal
Revenge is always the weak pleasure of a little and narrow mind.
—Juvenal
Topics: Revenge, Open-mindedness, Anger
They whose sole bliss is eating can give but that one brutish reason why they live.
—Juvenal
Topics: Diet
We should pray for a sane mind in a sound body.
—Juvenal
Topics: Prayer
It is unmistakable madness to live in poverty only to die rich.
—Juvenal
Topics: Poverty
Many commit the same crime with a different destiny; one bears a cross as the price of his villainy, another wears a crown.
—Juvenal
Topics: Crime, Criminals
Those who desire to become rich, desire it at once.
—Juvenal
Topics: Patience
Indulgence rare to pleasures lendeth zest
—Juvenal
Topics: One liners
We are too quick to imitate depraved examples.
—Juvenal
Topics: Example
I wish it, I command it. Let my will take the place of a reason.
—Juvenal
Topics: Motivation
Nature and wisdom always say the same.
—Juvenal
Topics: Nature
It is sheer madness to live in want in order to be wealthy when you die.
—Juvenal
Topics: Wealth, Madness
Who can all sense of others’ ills escape, is but a brute, at best, in human shape.
—Juvenal
Whatever guilt is perpetrated by some evil prompting, is grievous to the author of the crime. This is the first punishment of guilt that no one who is guilty is acquitted at the judgment seat of his own conscience.
—Juvenal
Topics: Guilt
Avarice increases with the increasing pile of gold.
—Juvenal
An incurable itch for scribbling takes possession of many, and grows inveterate in their insane breasts.
—Juvenal
Topics: Writing
All wish to possess knowledge, but few, comparatively speaking, are willing to pay the price.
—Juvenal
Topics: Knowledge
No one every suddenly became depraved.
—Juvenal
Topics: Desires
Hold it the greatest sin to prefer existence to honor, and for the sake of life to lose the reasons for living.
—Juvenal
Topics: Existence
Censure pardons the ravens, but rebukes the doves.
—Juvenal
A hairy body, and arms stiff with bristles, give promise of a manly soul.
—Juvenal
Topics: Men
All things may be bought in Rome with money.
—Juvenal
Topics: City Life, Cities
Many individuals have, like uncut diamonds, shining qualities beneath a rough exterior.
—Juvenal
Topics: Quality
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