to know and to be known; to love and to be loved

[Cinefactus]

hey guys, i took latin many, many moons ago, but i'm simply not up to this translation with enough surety to emblazon it on my flesh forever! can you help? i'm wanting to get a tattoo with the words:

"to know and to be known; to love and to be loved"

in latin.

can you help with an accurate translation for me?


thanks in advance for the help people.

peace.

[Chamaeleo]

‘Nōvisse et nōtus esse; amāre et amārī.’

[irishjack]

‘Nōvisse et nōtus esse; amāre et amārī.’

thanks so much for getting back to me so quickly on that chamaeleo. MUCH MUCH appreciated!!

grace and peace to you.

[Damoetas]

I wonder if it would be possible to use a different verb tense, so the endings would be parallel. Such as:

cognoscere et cognosci; amare et amari.

Chamaeleo is of course right that nosco and cognosco in the present tense mean "to find out, discover, get to know," whereas the perfect tense, originally "to have found out," is the more basic word for "know." Nevertheless, the interests of parallelism might be worth taking into consideration here. And in fact, thinking of "knowing" as a process of discovery might be kind of cool - what do others think?

[Chamaeleo]

Yeah, that sounds fine.

[Iohannes Aurum]

Looks excellent for a tattoo!

[Matthaeus]

Great homoioteleuton, or alliteration.