Nero Quotes

He slept more than any other president, whether by day or by night. Nero fiddled, but Coolidge only snored.

There live Christ and Nero in our hearts.

I try to know what I need to know. I make sure to know what I want to know. (Nero Wolfe)

Men call their sons Paul and their dogs Nero today.

You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor.

And you take care, too, Shahara. Remember the lies we tell ourselves to survive seldom bring peace to our souls. (Nero)

You know yourself what you are worth in your own eyes; and at what price you will sell yourself. For men sell themselves at various prices. This is why, when Florus was deliberating whether he should appear at Nero's shows, taking part in the performance himself, Agrippinus replied, 'Appear by all means.' And when Florus inquired, 'But why do not you appear?' he answered, 'Because I do not even consider the question.'

No problem, but just know that no one steals from Nero. He knows who you are and he will hunt you down and make you pay in ways you can’t imagine – including this whole brain squeeze thing he does that will leave you with a migraine so bad, you’ll wish you could bleed out your eyes to stop the pain. He’s nasty that way. (Syn)

Punishment [by Nero] was inflicted on the Christians, a class of men given to a new and mischievous superstition.

By the way, you guys seriously screwed up just now. (Nero) We know. (They said in unison.) Yeah, well, what you don’t know is how grateful your girl is to you. I just thought you should know that you guys are a hero to her…and she thinks we’re all idiots. (Nero)

I like to think how easily Nature will absorb London as she absorbed the mastodon, setting her spiders to spin the winding-sheet and her worms to fill in the grave, and her grass to cover it pitifully up, adding flowers - as an unknown hand added them to the grave of Nero.

Darkdoom? Darkdoom did this?" Nero was visibly surprised. He placed a hand on his forehead, rubbing his temples. "Oh, why is it always the bald ones?

Why does any martyr cooperate with his judases?...We see a game beyond the endgame...As Seneca warned Nero: No matter how many of us you kill, you will never kill your successor.

Keep an eye on that boy... he has potential," Dr Nero.

Nero wasn't worried at all when he heard the utterance of the Delphic Oracle: "Beware the age of seventy-three." Plenty of time to enjoy himself still. He's thirty. The deadline the god has given him is quite enough to cope with future dangers.

The possession of unlimited power will make a despot of almost any man. There is a possible Nero in the gentlest human creature that walks.

I’m not dead yet. It’s all good. (Omari) Good. That whole spontaneous combustion thing can be a real buzzkill. Ruins your clothes, too. (Nero)

Aren’t you afraid they’ll arrest you? (Shahara) I wasn’t a convict, Dagan. I was an illegally purchased slave. My owner has no legal claim on me. And I’m no longer a kid learning my powers. I’m a full-grown man with an ax I want to bury in the forehead of anyone dumb enough to come at me. I defy the bastards to try something now. (Nero)

Paul was Nero's prisoner, but Nero was much more God's.

The first persecution of the Church took place in the year 67, under Nero, the sixth emperor of Rome.

When Paul was taken in chains from his filthy Roman dungeon and beheaded at the order of the opulent madman Nero, two representatives of humanity faced off, one of the best and one of the worst. One lived for prosperity on earth, the other didn’t. One now lives in prosperity in heaven, the other doesn’t. We remember both men for what they truly were, which is why we name our sons Paul and our dogs Nero.

Thus Nero went up and down Greece and challenged the fiddlers at their trade. Æropus, a Macedonian king, made lanterns; Harcatius, the king of Parthia, was a mole-catcher; and Biantes, the Lydian, filed needles.

After ages during which the earth produced harmless trilobites and butterflies, evolution progressed to the point at which it generated Neros, Genghis Khans, and Hitlers. This, however, is a passing nightmare; in time the earth will become again incapable of supporting life, and peace will return.

Pliny the Elder, who when Rome was burning requested Nero to play You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Lucille. Never got a dinner!

It's not evil that's ruining the earth, but mediocrity. The crime is not that Nero played while Rome burned, but that he played badly.

"From the reign of Nero to that of Antoninus Pius," Gibbon says again, "the Jews discovered a fierce impatience of the dominion of Rome which repeatedly broke out in the most furious massacres and insurrections. Humanity is shocked at the recital of the horrid cruelties which the Jews committed in the cities of Egypt, of Cyprus, and of Cyrene, where they dwelt in treacherous friendship with the unsuspecting natives...In Cyrene they massacred 220,000 Greeks; in Cyprus 240,000; in Egypt a very great multitude. Many of these unhappy victims were sawed asunder..."

I’m telling you right now I could make him pop an aneurysm and no one would know. (Nero) Doesn’t that kind of murder bother you at all? (Alix) Given everything people have done to me in my life, little girl, especially in my childhood when I was helpless against them, humanity is lucky I’m not on a perpetual killing spree. As for the Merjacks…I owe them a debt that no amount of violence on my part will settle. So, no. Nothing about killing him would bother me. (Nero)

Youth is terrible: it is a stage trod by children in buskins and a variety of costumes mouthing speeches they've memorized and fanatically believe but only half understand. And history is terrible because it so often ends up a playground for the immature; a playground for the young Nero, a playground for the young Bonaparte, a playground for the easily roused mobs of children whose simulated passions and simplistic poses suddenly metamorphose into a catastrophically real reality.

I'm sure that Nero didn't set fire to Rome. It was the Christian-Bolsheviks who did that, just as the Commune set fire to Paris in 1871 and the Communists set fire to the Reichstag in 1932.

Praise be to Nero's Neptune The Titanic sails at dawn And everybody's shouting "Which Side Are You On?" And Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot Fighting in the captain's tower While calypso singers laugh at them And fishermen hold flowers.

We haven't done anything. That has devolved into a partisan bickering of the kind that says Nero was fiddling while Rome burned.

Following Emporer Nero's command, "Let the Christians be exterminated!:" . . . they [the Christians] were made the subjects of sport; they were covered with the hides of wild beasts and worried to death by dogs, or nailed to crosses or set fire to, and when the day waned, burned to serve for the evening lights.

They say that Nero started the fire himself because he needed a suitable backdrop for his concert.

The ghost of the heart of manred Cain And the more murderous brain Of Man, still redder Nero that conceived the death Of his mother Earth, and tore Her womb, to know the place where he was conceived.

Our Bible reveals to us the character of our god with minute and remorseless exactness... It is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in print anywhere. It makes Nero an angel of light and leading by contrast.

Paul was Nero's prisoner, but Nero was much more God's... But how does the great apostle spend his time in prison?... We read of no dispatches sent to court to procure his liberty; but many to the churches, to help them to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ had made them free... The devil had as good have let Paul alone, for he no sooner comes into prison but he falls a preaching, at which the gates of Satan's prison fly open, and poor sinners come forth.

What if there is no dirt on Merjack? Oh, I can answer this one. (Omari raised his hand like he was in a classroom, then dropped it to his side.) We all die. (Omari) I just love teenage angst. By the way, chip, there are worse things in life than dying. (Nero) Like what? (Omari) Living as a slave. (Alix)

Of all the difficulties in a state, the temper of a true government most felicifies and perpetuates it; too sudden alterations distemper it. Had Nero tuned his kingdom as he did his harp, his harmony had been more honorable, and his reign more prosperous.

If, as you believe there is an Almighty, Omnipresent, Omniscient God, who created the earth or universe, please let me know, first of all, as to why he created this world. This world which is full of woe and grief, and countless miseries, where not even one person lives in peace....Where is God? What is He doing? Is He getting a diseased pleasure out of it? A Nero! A Genghis Khan! Down with Him!

The Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger (tutor to Nero) complained that his peers were wasting time and money accumulating too many books, admonishing that "the abundance of books is a distraction." Instead, Seneca recommended focusing on a limited number of good books, to be read thoroughly and repeatedly.

The absolute ruler may be a Nero, but he is sometimes a Titus or Marc Aurelius; the people is often Nero, but never Marc Aurelius.