Juvenal

“ If a slave takes a lick at the pastry, he gets a thrashing for his pains! Why do you look as woe-begone as Crepereius Pollio when he goes round offering a triple rate of interest, and can find no fool to trust him? ”

“ What do you advise me to do now, after all my lost time and disappointed hopes? for the short span of our poor unhappy life is hurrying swiftly on, like a flower, to its close; while we drink, and call for chaplets, for unguents, and for maidens, old age is creeping on us unperceived. ”

“ You have a hang-dog look; your head is a forest of unkempt, unanointed hair; your skin has lost all the gloss that it got from swathes of hot Bruttian pitch, and your legs are dirty and rough with sprouting hair. Why are you as thin as a chronic invalid in whom a quartan fever has long made its home? ”

“ Is it to be no merit, you thankless and perfidious man, none at all, that I have presented you with a little son or daughter? For you rear the children, and love to spread abroad in the gazette the proofs of your virility. ”

“ For what calumny will they hesitate to concoct against their masters when a slander will avenge them for their strappings? Nor will some tippling friend be wanting to look for you at the crossways, and, do what you will, pour his drunken story into your ear. ”

“ There's many a household in which a union that was unstable, ready to break up, and all but dissolved, has been saved by the intervention of a lover. Which way can you turn? Which service do you put first, which last? ”

“ I sometimes have a greasy cloak given me that will save my toga—a coarse and crudely dyed garment that has been ill-combed by the Gallic weaver—or some trifle in silver of an inferior quality. Man is ruled by destiny ”