Latin Proverbs and Phrases: How to Memorize 153 Flashcards from Carpe Diem to Sub Rosa

Deck OI4000, Latin Proverbs & Famous Quotes, holds 153 cards and is really two decks under one title. Roughly sixty are genuine proverbs and mottoes — full sentences carrying a lesson. The rest are Latin fragments that never left English: circa, ad hoc, per capita, i.e., curriculum vitae. Which half a card belongs to decides how you study it, so sort them first.

Ten cards that show the range

What the 153 cards cover

• Latin already living in English — ad hoc, ad nauseam, bona fide, circa, de facto, de jure, exempli gratia, id est, per capita, per se, prima facie, ipso facto, quid pro quo, status quo, vice versa, in situ, in vitro, in vivo, alter ego, alma mater, magnum opus, modus operandi, persona non grata, tabula rasa, post mortem, anno Domini, curriculum vitae.
• Courtroom Latin — habeas corpus, caveat emptor, corpus delicti, ignorantia juris non excusat, audi alteram partem, ex post facto, ex cathedra, arguendo, in loco parentis, honoris causa, summa cum laude.
• Mottoes — E pluribus unum, Semper fidelis, Nemo me impune lacessit, Nulli secundus, Per aspera ad astra, Veritas vos liberabit, Citius Altius Fortius.
• Philosophy and literature — Cogito ergo sum, Carpe diem, Memento mori, Errare humanum est, Nosce te ipsum, Homo homini lupus, Bellum omnium contra omnes, Credo quia absurdum, Ars longa vita brevis, Panem et circenses, Divide et impera, Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
• Church and liturgy — Ave Maria, Gloria in excelsis Deo, Fiat lux, Deo gratias, Deus vult, Dies irae, Te Deum, Requiescat in pace, Ad maiorem Dei gloriam, Ecce homo.

Three passes, and where the duplicates hide

The deck stacks three lists. Cards 1-36 are the greatest hits plus the English-Latin vocabulary. Cards 37-89 run alphabetically from Ars longa to Vox populi. Cards 90-153 restart at A with Ab initio — and stop dead at In vivo. That third pass never reaches J through Z, which is why nota bene, sine qua non, sui generis, res ipsa loquitur and ultra vires are absent. Add them yourself once the queue is clear.

The seams produce duplicates: Cogito, ergo sum sits at card 3 and again at 45, while Amor vincit omnia (39) and Omnia vincit amor (73) share one back. Keep 73 — Virgil's word order — and suspend the other. Three backs need a fix: card 58 prints Terence as Homo sum humani a me nihil alienum puto when the line is Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto; card 38 gives Audaces fortuna iuvat, a later variant of Virgil's Audentis fortuna iuvat (Aeneid X.284); and the Olympic motto on card 44 has been Citius, Altius, Fortius – Communiter since 2021.

Two study tips

1. Put the author and the century in the hint field. No card says who spoke, and a dozen are not Roman at all: Cogito ergo sum is Descartes in 1637, Bellum omnium contra omnes is Hobbes in 1651, Deus vult belongs to the First Crusade, Credo quia absurdum is pinned on Tertullian but appears nowhere in his writing. Dated cards turn a flat list into a timeline.

2. Clear the single words fast, then read the sentences aloud. Circa, per se and vice versa are vocabulary — one pass and they stick. The full sentences are grammar in disguise: saying Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt out loud drills accusative objects and a relative clause. Note that the deck spells the same letter both ways — iacta, iuvat against jure, justitia.

Where to find it

Log in at flip-it.app and search for code OI4000. For the vocabulary underneath these phrases, see How to Learn 500 Common Latin Words; for the technical register, Master Medical Latin.