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
Two things only the people anxiously desire, bread and the circus games.
—Juvenal
Topics: Sports
From where can your authority and license as a parent come from, when you who are old, do worse things?
—Juvenal
Topics: Parents, Parenting
Every error of the mind is the more conspicuous, and culpable, in proportion to the rank of the person who commits it.
—Juvenal
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: Aging, Age
It is unmistakable madness to live in poverty only to die rich.
—Juvenal
Topics: Poverty
The skilful class of flatterers praise the discourse of an ignorant friend and the face of a deformed one.
—Juvenal
Topics: Flattery
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
Honesty is praised and starves.
—Juvenal
Topics: Honesty
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
Integrity is praised and then left out in the cold.
—Juvenal
Topics: Integrity
Those who desire to become rich, desire it at once.
—Juvenal
Topics: Patience
Censure pardons the ravens, but rebukes the doves.
—Juvenal
When did reason ever direct our desires or our fears?
—Juvenal
Topics: Fear
Seldom do people discern
Eloquence under a threadbare cloak.
—Juvenal
Topics: Poverty
A lucky man is rarer than a white crow.
—Juvenal
Topics: Luck
We should pray for a sane mind in a sound body.
—Juvenal
Topics: Prayer
Bad men hate sin through fear of punishment; good men hate sin through their love of virtue.
—Juvenal
Topics: Sin
An incurable itch for scribbling takes possession of many, and grows inveterate in their insane breasts.
—Juvenal
Topics: Writing
Only death reveals what a nothing the body of man is.
—Juvenal
Topics: Death
Even savage animals can agree among themselves.
—Juvenal
Topics: Agreement
Like warmed-up cabbage served at each repast, The repetition kills the wretch at last.
—Juvenal
Avarice increases with the increasing pile of gold.
—Juvenal
Nature never says one thing, Wisdom another.
—Juvenal
We do not commonly find men of superior sense amongst those of the highest fortune.
—Juvenal
Topics: Men, Wealth
No other protection is wanting, provided you are under the guidance ot prudence.
—Juvenal
Topics: Prudence
Whenever fortune wishes to joke, she lifts people from what is humble to the highest extremity of affairs.
—Juvenal
Your prayer must be for a sound mind in a sound body.
—Juvenal
Topics: Health, Prayer
Despair of peace as long as your mother-in-law is alive.
—Juvenal
We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learned to bear its ills, without being overcome by them.
—Juvenal
Topics: Happiness, Persistence, Adversity
In the present state of the world it is difficult not to write lampoons.
—Juvenal
Topics: Cynicism
No man ever arrived suddenly at the summit of vice.
—Juvenal
Topics: Vice
It is a wretched thing to live on the fame of others.
—Juvenal
Topics: Fame
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
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
Many individuals have, like uncut diamonds, shining qualities beneath a rough exterior.
—Juvenal
Topics: Quality
Never does nature say one thing and wisdom another.
—Juvenal
Topics: Wisdom, Nature
Revenge is the abject pleasure of an abject mind.
—Juvenal
Topics: Revenge, Vengeance, One liners
Examples of vicious courses, practised in a domestic circle, corrupt more readily and more deeply, when we behold them in persons of authority.
—Juvenal
Topics: Example
The smell of profit is clean and sweet, whatever the source.
—Juvenal
Topics: Wealth
Nature and wisdom always say the same.
—Juvenal
Topics: Nature
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