Catullus Quotes

“Oh this age! How tasteless and ill-bred it is!”

“Nothing is more silly than silly laughter.”

“I hate and love. And why, perhaps you’ll ask.I don’t know: but I feel, and I’m tormented.”

“Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris. Nescio. des fieri sentio et excrucior.I hate and I love. You may ask, why I do this. I do not know. But I sense that I do and it pains me.”

“Journeying over many seas & through many countries I came dear brother to this pitiful leave-taking The last gestures by your gravesideThe futility of words over your quiet ashes.Life cleft us from each other Pointlessly depriving brother of brotherAccept then, our parents' customThese offerings, this leave-takingEchoing forever, brother, through a brother's tears”

“We should live, my Lesbia, and loveAnd value all the talk of stricterOld men at a single penny.Suns can set and rise again;For us, once our brief light has set,There's one unending night for sleeping.Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred,Then another thousand, then a second hundred,Then still another thousand, then a hundred;Then, when we've made many thousands,We'll muddle them so as not to knowOr lest some villain overlook usKnowing the total of our kisses.(Translated by Guy Lee)”

“But your own tears blind you to mine.I am not neglectful of friendship,but we two squat in the same coracle,we are both swamped by the same stormy waters,I have not the gifts of a happy man. . . Often enough.”

“I have lost you, my brotherAnd your death has ended The spring seasonOf my happiness, our house is buried with youAnd buried the laughter that you taught me.There are no thoughts of love nor of poemsIn my head Since you died.”

“What a woman tells her lover in desireshould be written out on air & running water.”