Horace Quotes

It is more difficult, and it calls for higher energies of soul, to live a martyr than to die one.

Journalism kills you, but it keeps you alive as long as you're doing it.

Choose a subject equal to your abilities; think carefully what your shoulders may refuse, and what they are capable of bearing.

Remember to preserve a calm soul amid difficulties.

Musical composition should bring happiness and joy to people and make them forget their troubles.

Think to yourself that every day is your last; the hour to which you do not look forward will come as a welcome surprise.

Nature is harmony in discord.

Day is pushed out by day, and each new moon hastens to its death. [Lat., Truditur dies die, Novaeque pergunt interire lunae.]

Mistakes are their own instructors

Bigotry is chronic dogmatism.

There may be frugality which is not economy. A community, that withholds the means of education from its children, withholds the bread of life and starves their souls.

The war brought out all the art in me.

We all have to open our minds, stretch forth, take chances and venture out musically to try and arrive at something new and different.

Wine brings to light the hidden secrets of the soul.

You must avoid sloth, that wicked siren.

This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.

Knowledge is the foundation and source of good writing. [Lat., Scibendi recte sapere est et principium et fons.]

To equip a pedestrian with shelter, bedding, utensils, food, and other necessities, in a pack so light and small that he can carry it without overstrain, is really a fine art.

Clogged with yesterday's excess, the body drags the mind down with it.

He will always be a slave who does not know how to live upon a little.

They change their skies, but not their souls who run across the sea.

The best use of a journal is to print the largest practical amount of important truth: truth which tends to make mankind wiser, and thus happier.

Only a stomach that rarely feels hungry scorns common things.

Happy the man who, removed from all cares of business, after the manner of his forefathers cultivates with his own team his paternal acres, freed from all thought of usury.

Too indolent to bear the toil of writing; I mean of writing well; I say nothing about quantity. [Lat., Piger scribendi ferre laborem; Scribendi recte, nam ut multum nil moror.]

Virtue, dear friend, needs no defense, The surest guard is innocence: None knew, till guilt created fear, What darts or poisoned arrows were

Above all, let the poor hang up the amulet of temperance in their homes.

Let us labor for that larger comprehension of truth, and that more thorough repudiation of error, which shall make the history of mankind a series of ascending developments.

I would advise him who wishes to imitate well, to look closely into life and manners, and thereby to learn to express them with truth.

Our country right or wrong is an evil motto - what if your country be in the wrong? It will only compound her injury. I wish to serve the republic with an honest and fearless criticism.

Anger is a short madness.

Enjoy in happiness the pleasures which each hour brings with it.

Be smart, drink your wine.

My cares and my inquiries are for decency and truth, and in this I am wholly occupied.

I hate the irreverent rabble and keep them far from me.

Being, be bold and venture to be wise.

There is no doctrine of Christianity but what has been anticipated by the Vedas.

He appears mad indeed but to a few, because the majority is infected with the same disease.

The going is the goal.

He who is greedy is always in want.

Resolve to edge in a little reading every day, if it is but a single sentence. If you gain fifteen minutes a day, it will make itself felt at the end of the year.

Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power.

Schoolhouses are the republican line of fortifications.

Nine-tenths of the people were created so you would want to be with the other tenth.

Often turn the stile [correct with care], if you expect to write anything worthy of being read twice. [Lat., Saepe stilum vertas, iterum quae digna legi sint Scripturus.]

Let it (what you have written) be kept back until the ninth year. [Lat., Nonumque prematur in annum.]

If you cannot conduct yourself with propriety, give place to those who can.

Many shall be restored that now are fallen and many shall fall that now are in honor.

What does drunkenness accomplish? It discloses secrets, it ratifies hopes, and urges even the unarmed to battle.

While we're talking, time will have meanly run on... pick today's fruits, not relying on the future in the slightest.