My 'favorite quote' is a poem, really... Made by a roman poet called 'Catullus' a long long time ago.
This person was totally in love with this woman (which he calls 'lesbia', as some sort of an homage to the greek woman-poet 'Sappho', who was Catullus' idol), but incidentally she was the 'slut of rome'... so to say. She did everyone she thought was 'worth looking at naked', and didn't really commit in long term relationships (even though she was married).
So: he loved her, but at the same time, he hated her because she was with someone else all the time... And that's what the poem's all about: this conflicting feeling of love and hatred, which actually summarises most of Catullus' poems (which were a LOT) about her.
It's most widely known as 'Odi et amo', and is one of the most famous latin poems, it is on par with the sentence of 'veni, vidi, vici', and is even printed on t-shirts... Another poem widely known is the poem of 'Ille mi par esse deo videtur', translating to 'he seems to me as being on par with a god'. Written when he comments on the person married to Lesbia, as he is able to look at her sweet smile all day long. It's a nice poem. Go look it up... or PM me or something...)
Anyways: It goes like this (and yes, I know the entire poem by heart... It's only a few lines, mind you!)
Odi et amo. Quaere id faciam, fortasse requiris.
Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.
Translation:
I love and I hate. Why I do this, you ask, perhaps.
I don't know, but I feel it happening and I'm tortured by it.
Another one of my favorite quotes is
Cogito ergo sum
Widely misinterpreted, and it was even considered a 'mistake to write' by the original author himself: Descartes. It doesn't mean "I think, therefore, I am"... Which the actual latin literally implies. It means that "there is active, concious mind, thinking, therefore this active, concious mind must exists". Descartes couldn't say anything about himself, that HE was because he could think, because there was no way to prove that mind was his. All he knew and could find out was that there was mind... But whose or what mind it was, he couldn't tell.
And then there's my third favorite quote
Alea iacta est
Uttered by Gaius Julius Caesar as he crossed the river Rubicon with his legion. He wanted to try to recapture Rome from his fellow-consul, who had 'conquered' Rome for himself while Caesar was fighting in Gaul, who had put the senate and (at least tried) to put the people of rome against him, who had... in short: 'betrayed' him.
The sentence means 'the dime is cast'... Meaning that he had set events in motion, and had to accept the outcome, the concequences, whatever they were. There was no way back.
Oh hell... why not put a fourth one in here..
Veni Vidi Vici
I came, I saw, I conquered. These three words were written to the senate of Rome in his monthly (?) report about the war. He was busy fighting in Gaul, I believe... And had conquered it, when he asked by the senate how he was doing. This is what he wrote back. What a man ...
Gosh... I never knew I was such a sucker for roman stuff
Oh well: Take care everyone!!!
-CD
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