Latin
Quotations V
Remember to pronounce it as W

Vae victis
Woe to the vanquished
Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 5/48:9; earlier in Plautus, Pseudolus 1317 (or 5/2:34)

Veritatem dies aperit
Time discovers truth.
Seneca, De Ira 2:22

Vetus consuetudo naturae vim obtinet
An old custom acquires the force of nature
Cicero, De Inventione

Vincere scis, Hannibal, victoria uti nescis
You know how to conquer, Hannibal, but not how to use your victory
Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 22/51:4
said to Hannibal after his victory at Cannae, 0216

Vir bonus, dicendi peritus
A good man, skilled in speaking (of the ideal orator)
Cato the Elder, Fragment 14, quoted by Quintilian Institutio Oratoria 12/1:1
for a modern variant, see next

Vir bonus, discendi peritus
A good man, skilled in finding out
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, defining the philologist at a lecture in 1877
and ending his Geschichte der Philologie (1921); see AJP 108/168f
Used by Houseman in his Cambridge inaugural lecture of 1911

Viribus parantur, iure retinentur
[Conquered territories] are gained by force of arms, but retained by justice
Florus, Libri II 2/30:29

Virtus in usu sui tota posita est
Virtue consists solely in its application
Cicero, De Re Publica 1:2
compare "Confucius" (Analects *4:25): virtue does not exist in isolation

Vita sine proposito vaga est
Life without some purpose is mere drifting
Seneca, Epistulae Morales 95:46
intensified by Francis Bacon as . . . languida et vaga est

Vitamque sub divo et trepidis agat / in rebus
And let him pass his life beneath the sky, amid stirring deeds
Horace, Carmina 3:2, on toughening up the young
quoted by Montaigne, in an essay on the education of children
[divo sometimes read as dio; same meaning. Montaigne used dio]

Vitiis nemo sine nascitur
No one is [born] without faults
Horace, Satires 1/3:68
in the original preceded by nam

Vivant et qui ante nos, nostra iam dixerunt
Long life to those who said our good things before we did
Benjamin Bacon, on Alfred Loisy
compare the less generous Aelius Donatus original, at Pereant

Vivas ut possis, quando necquis ut velis
Live as you can, inasmuch as you cannot live as you would
Caecilius Statius, Plocium

Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona / multi
Brave men there lived, e'er Agamemnon / many . .
Horace, Carmina 4/9:25-26
. . . but they died unwept (inlacrimabiles), since there were no poets before Homer
[Vixere is sometime standardized to vixerunt, but Horace wrote "vixere"]

Volito vivus per ora virum
For I shall live, alive on the tongues of men
Ennius, Epigrammata (from an epitaph for his own tomb)

Vox audita perit
The spoken word perishes
attributed to Horace
for the following phrase, see at Littera

Vultus est index animi
The face is the index of the soul
Cicero, De Oratore 3/59:221: Animi est enim omnis actio, et imago animi vultus, indices oculi
a favorite remark of Nero Wolfe

 

10 Dec 2005 / Contact The Project / Exit to Reference Page