Inspirational Quotes by Juvenal (Roman Poet)

Inspirational Quotations by Juvenal (Roman Poet)

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

I wish it, I command it. Let my will take the place of a reason.
—Juvenal
Topics: Motivation

Two things only the people anxiously desire, bread and the circus games.
—Juvenal
Topics: Sports

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

Seldom do people discern
Eloquence under a threadbare cloak.
—Juvenal
Topics: Poverty

Vice can deceive under the shadow and guise of virtue.
—Juvenal
Topics: Vice

Bad men hate sin through fear of punishment; good men hate sin through their love of virtue.
—Juvenal
Topics: Sin

Look around the habitable world: how few know their own good, or knowing it, pursue.
—Juvenal
Topics: Helping, Career

Nature and wisdom always say the same.
—Juvenal
Topics: Nature

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

No man ever arrived suddenly at the summit of vice.
—Juvenal
Topics: Vice

We are too quick to imitate depraved examples.
—Juvenal
Topics: Example

Censure pardons the ravens, but rebukes the doves.
—Juvenal

One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
—Juvenal
Topics: Punishment

Revenge is the abject pleasure of an abject mind.
—Juvenal
Topics: One liners, Revenge, Vengeance

It is unmistakable madness to live in poverty only to die rich.
—Juvenal
Topics: Poverty

The examples of vice at home corrupt us more quickly and easily than others, since they steal into our minds under the highest authority.
—Juvenal
Topics: Home

A man who has nothing can whistle in a robber’s face.
—Juvenal
Topics: The Poor, Poverty

No other protection is wanting, provided you are under the guidance ot prudence.
—Juvenal
Topics: Prudence

All things may be bought in Rome with money.
—Juvenal
Topics: Cities, City Life

We do not commonly find men of superior sense amongst those of the highest fortune.
—Juvenal
Topics: Wealth, Men

From where can your authority and license as a parent come from, when you who are old, do worse things?
—Juvenal
Topics: Parents, Parenting

Whenever fortune wishes to joke, she lifts people from what is humble to the highest extremity of affairs.
—Juvenal

A third heir seldom enjoys what has been dishonestly acquired.
—Juvenal
Topics: Inheritance

The love of money grows as the money itself grows.
—Juvenal
Topics: Money

Who can all sense of others’ ills escape, is but a brute, at best, in human shape.
—Juvenal

How incessant and great are the ills with which a prolonged old age is replete.
—Juvenal
Topics: Age, Aging

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

Integrity is praised and then left out in the cold.
—Juvenal
Topics: Integrity

They whose sole bliss is eating can give but that one brutish reason why they live.
—Juvenal
Topics: Diet

Revenge is always the weak pleasure of a little and narrow mind.
—Juvenal
Topics: Revenge, Anger, Open-mindedness