Gaius Valerius Catullus

“I don’t particularly want to please you, Caesar, nor to know whether you are a white man or a black.”

“My mind has been brought to this, Lesbia, by your fault, and has so ruined itself by its own devotion.”

“What a woman says to her ardent lover should be written in wind and running water.”

“Suns can set and rise again; but for us, when the brief light has set, there is one long night to be slept.”

“Now I know you: for that reason I burn more fiercely, but in my sight you are a cheaper and a lighter thing.”

“Wretched Catullus, you must stop being a fool, and what you see has been lost you must count as lost.”

“Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love, and let us value all the talk of stricter old men at a single penny.”

“Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then another thousand, then a second hundred, then yet another thousand, then a hundred.”

“Ave atque vale.”

“I hate and I love. Why I do this, perhaps you ask. I know not, but I feel it happening and I am tortured.”

“My love is like a flower at the edge of a meadow, which has been touched by the passing plough.”

“There is nothing more silly than a silly laugh.”