Ars longa, vita brevis: Art is long, life is short

Raphael’s fresco, “The School of Athens,” from the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican, helps reiterate this Hippocratic translation.

 

These redesigned full color buttons make great classroom prizes or Latin Club fundraisers. See additional quotes and order a variety of buttons:

P1 Amat victoria curam –Anon.
Victory likes careful preparation.
This quote about victory is fitting before an image of Rome’s Colosseum.

P2 Experientia docet –Tacitus
Experience teaches.
A weathered column stands behind this line from Tacitus.

P3 Modus omnibus in rebus –Plautus
Moderation in all things.
An Athenian tetradrachm provides the background for this quote from Plautus.

P4 Saepe summa ingenia in occulto –Plautus
Often the greatest minds lie hidden.
Theatrical masks on a Roman mosaic from the Capitoline Museums drive home Plautus’s point.

P5 Ipsa scientia potestas est –Sir Francis Bacon?
Knowledge itself is power.
An open book lies behind this quote, possibly from Sir Francis Bacon.

P6 Non est ad astra mollis e terris via –Seneca
The trip from the earth to the stars is not an easy one.
Seneca’s words work well with this photograph of the Eagle nebula, “Pillars of Creation,” captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

P7 Nihil est…simul et inventum et perfectum –Cicero
Nothing is simultaneously both conceived and perfected.
A bust of Cicero in the Capitoline Museums is behind this line from Cicero.

P8 Damnant quod non intellegunt –Anon.
They condemn what they do not understand.
Together this quote and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina nod to the Library of Alexandria, lost in antiquity.

P9 Errare est humanum –Anon.
To err is human.
Eraser shavings serve as a nice addendum to this quote.

P10 Mens sana in corpore sano –Juvenal
A sound mind in a sound body.
The Pseudo-Athlete of Delos, from the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, illustrates this line from Juvenal.

P11 Ars longa, vita brevis –Hippocrates—Translation
Art is long, life is short.
Raphael’s fresco, “The School of Athens,” from the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican, helps reiterate this Hippocratic translation.

P12 Cogito, ergo sum –Descartes—Translation
I think, therefore I am.
Rodin’s sculpture, “The Thinker,” sitting in the garden of the Rodin museum, seems to ponder Descartes here.

P13 Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? –Juvenal
But who will guard the guards themselves?
This line from Juvenal works well with this image of soldiers from Hadrian’s Column in Rome.

P14 Veni, vidi, vici –Caesar
I came, I saw, I conquered.
Nicolas Coustou’s statue of Caesar located in the Louvre Museum is in the background.

P15 Virtus et sapientia –Anon.
Virtue and wisdom.
This quote is placed before a mosaic of Sappho, located in the Piazza Museo Nazionale in Naples, Italy.

P16 Dabit deus his quoque finem –Vergil
God will also give an end to these things.
This quote from Vergil’s Aeneid looms over these Pompeiian remains, much like Mount Vesuvius in the background.

P17 Timeo Danaos et dona ferentis –Vergil
I fear Greeks (even) bearing gifts.
The Trojan horse, as seen on this vase from the Archaeological Museum of Mykonos, stands behind the quote from Vergil.

P18 Citius Altius Fortius –Olympics Motto
Faster, Higher, Stronger.
The motto of the Olympics fittingly placed before a laurel.

P19 Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit –Vergil
Perhaps someday it will bring pleasure to remember even these things.
The line from Vergil’s Aeneid speaks as much for the epic as it does for the Gustave Doré painting of Vergil leading Dante, from France’s Musée de Brou.

P20 Ego sum rex Romanus et supra grammaticam –King Sigismund the First?
I am a Roman king and above grammar.
Pisanello’s portrait of Sigismund of Luxemburg, now in Vienna, is placed behind a quote, possibly from the king himself

P21 Homo sum; humani nil a me alienum puto –Terence
I am a human being; I consider nothing human alien to me.
Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, found in the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice, is behind this quote by Terence.

P22 Non omnis moriar –Horace
Not all of me shall die.
The name of the poet resides in this ceiling mosaic from the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

P23 Da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo –St. Augustine
Grant me chastity and self-control but not yet.
Bottivelli’s painting, St. Augustine in His Study, located in Uffizi, Florence, is paired with this quote from Augustine.

P24 Felicitas multos habet amicos –Erasmus
Prosperity has many friends.
Hans Holbein’s portrait of Erasmus, at the Louvre Museum, provides a background for this Erasmus quote.

P25 Rex quondam, Rexque futurus –Sir Thomas Malory
The once and future king.
Malory’s words, said to be on the tomb of King Arthur, appear here alongside Arthur, as seen on the Christian Heroes Tapestry in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

P26 –Augustus
Make haste slowly.
The image of this mosaic from the House of the Trident in Delos has, since antiquity, illustrated this oxymoronic adage.

P27 –St. Paul
I have fought the good fight.
This Valentin de Boulogne painting, Saint Paul Writing His Epistles, from Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts, is paired with a line from St. Paul.

P28 –Aeschylus
Learn though suffering.
This image of Laocoon from the Pio Clementino Museum at the Vatican is fitting behind this Aeschylus quote.

P29 –Plutarch
Son, come home with your shield or on it.
This dying warrior, now in Munich, from the Temple of Aphaea at Aegina, Greece, falls with his shield in hand behind this line from Plutarch.

P30 –Thales
Know thyself.
This quote from Thales is paired with an image of the remains of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi.