Horace Quotes

A person will gain everyone's approval if he mixes the pleasant with the useful.

What we hear strikes the mind with less force than what we see.

What prevents a man's speaking good sense with a smile on his face?

When discord dreadful bursts the brazen bars, And shatters iron locks to thunder forth her wars.

The snow has at last melted, the fields regain their herbage, and the trees their leaves.

The sad dislike those who are cheerful, and the cheerful dislike the melancholy.

The question is yet before the court.

The ox longs for the gaudy trappings of the horse; the lazy pack-horse would fain plough. [We envy the position of others, dissatisfied with our own.]

Whatever hour God has blessed you with, take it with a grateful hand.

The mob may hiss me, but I congratulate myself while I contemplate my treasures in their hoard.

The lofty pine is most easily brought low by the force of the wind, and the higher the tower the greater the fall thereof.

How great, my friends, is the virtue of living upon a little!

Grammatici certant et adhuc sub iudice lis est. - Grammarians dispute, and the case it still before the courts.

Happy he who far from business persuits Tills and re-tills his ancestral lands With oxen of his own breeding Having no slavish yoke about his neck.

Let those who drink not, but austerely dine, dry up in law; the Muses smell of wine.

What has not wasting time impaired?

Even-handed fate Hath but one law for small and great: That ample urn holds all men's names.

Let your literary compositions be kept from the public eye for nine years at least.

Twixt hope and fear, anxiety and anger.

To the inexperienced it is a pleasant thing to court the favour of the great; an experienced man fears it.

Thus one thing requires assistance from another, and joins in friendly help.

Those who say nothing about their poverty will obtain more than those who turn beggars.

There is nothing hard inside the olive; nothing hard outside the nut.

There is no retracing our steps.

Wealth increaseth, but a nameless something is ever wanting to our insufficient fortune.

If you know anything better than this candidly impart it; if not, use this with me.

Poverty urges us to do and suffer anything that we may escape from it, and so leads us away from virtue.

Summer treads on heels of spring.

When I caution you against becoming a miser, I do not therefore advise you to become a prodigal or a spendthrift.

High descent and meritorious deeds, unless united to wealth, are as useless as seaweed.

Multa ferunt anni venientes commoda secum, Multa recedentes adimiunt. (The years, as they come, bring many agreeable things with them; as they go, they take many away.)

Pale death knocks with impartial foot at poor men's hovels and king's palaces.

Seize the day [Carpe diem]: trust not to the morrow.

Tis pleasant to have a large heap to take from.

Damnosa quid non imminuit dies? What does not destructive time destroy?

I have completed a monument more lasting than brass.

Anger is brief madness

That man lives happy and in command of himself, who from day to day can say I have lived. Whether clouds obscure, or the sun illumines the following day, that which is past is beyond recall.

While we're talking, envious time is fleeing: pluck the day, put no trust in the future

I strive to be brief, and become obscure.

Our sires' age was worse than our grandsires'. We their sons are more worthless than they: so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt.

I shall not completely die.

Virtue, opening heaven to those who do not deserve to die, makes her course by paths untried. [Lat., Virtus, recludens immeritis mori Coelum, negata tentat iter via.]

This used to be among my prayers - a piece of land not so very large, which would contain a garden

It is difficult to speak of what is common in a way of your own.

There is measure in all things.

Who prates of war or want after his wine? [Lat., Quis post vina gravem militiam aut pauperiem crepat?]

The accumulation of wealth is followed by an increase of care, and by an appetite for more.

Sovereign money procures a wife with a large fortune, gets a man credit, creates friends, stands in place of pedigree, and even of beauty.

We are just statistics, born to consume resources.