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
In the present state of the world it is difficult not to write lampoons.
—Juvenal
Topics: Cynicism
A lucky man is rarer than a white crow.
—Juvenal
Topics: Luck
No man ever arrived suddenly at the summit of vice.
—Juvenal
We do not commonly find men of superior sense amongst those of the highest fortune.
—Juvenal
Topics: Men, Wealth
All wish to possess knowledge, but few, comparatively speaking, are willing to pay the price.
—Juvenal
Topics: Knowledge
Revenge is always the weak pleasure of a little and narrow mind.
—Juvenal
Topics: Open-mindedness, Revenge, Anger
Bad men hate sin through fear of punishment; good men hate sin through their love of virtue.
—Juvenal
Topics: Sin
Every error of the mind is the more conspicuous, and culpable, in proportion to the rank of the person who commits it.
—Juvenal
Revenge is the abject pleasure of an abject mind.
—Juvenal
Topics: One liners, Revenge
Look around the habitable world: how few know their own good, or knowing it, pursue.
—Juvenal
Topics: Helping
Who can all sense of others’ ills escape, is but a brute, at best, in human shape.
—Juvenal
Two things only the people anxiously desire, bread and the circus games.
—Juvenal
A hairy body, and arms stiff with bristles, give promise of a manly soul.
—Juvenal
Topics: Men
We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learned to bear its ills, without being overcome by them.
—Juvenal
Topics: Persistence, Adversity, Happiness
How incessant and great are the ills with which a prolonged old age is replete.
—Juvenal
Topics: Age, Aging
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