Ovid
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso, known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace with whom he is often ranked as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature. The Imperial scholar Quintilian considered him the last of the Latin love elegists. He enjoyed enormous popularity, but, in one of the mysteries of literary history, he was sent by Augustus into exile...
NationalityRoman
ProfessionPoet
passion muse cupid
When I was from Cupid's passions free, my Muse was mute and wrote no elegy.
change body intention
My intention is to tell of bodies changed into new forms.
divinity breasts
There is a divinity within our breast.
change age movement
All things change, nothing is extinguished. There is nothing in the whole world which is permanent. Everything flows onward; all things are brought into being with a changing nature; the ages themselves glide by in constant movement.
giver acceptable
Those gifts are ever the most acceptable which the giver makes precious. [Lat., Acceptissima semper munera sunt auctor quae pretiosa facit.]
art men utility
Nothing is more useful to man that those arts which have no utility.
taken future hunters
The hunter follows things which flee from him; he leaves them when they are taken; and ever seeks for that which is beyond what he has found. [Lat., Venator sequitur fugientia; capta relinquit; Semper et inventis ulteriora petit.]
attitude light burden
Burdens become light when cheerfully borne.
made giver
Those gifts are ever more precious which the giver has made precious.
ravens white swans
The raven once in snowy plumes was drest, White as the whitest dove's unsullied breast, Fair as the guardian of the Capitol, Soft as the swan; a large and lovely fowl His tongue, his prating tongue had changed him quite To sooty blackness from the purest white.
wise time delay
At times it is folly to hasten at other times, to delay. The wise do everything in its proper time.
eye sight soul
Those things that nature denied to human sight, she revealed to the eyes of the soul.
friendship years envy
Live without envy, spend your peaceful years Unknown to fame, and choose your peers for friends.
agriculture fields cultivation
Time spent in the cultivation of the fields passes very pleasantly.