Horace Quotes

The one who cannot restrain their anger will wish undone, what their temper and irritation prompted them to do.

It was said of old Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, that she never puts dots over her I s, to save ink.

Years, following years, steal something every day; At last they steal us from ourselves away.

Painters and poets alike have always had license to dare anything! We know that, and we both claim and allow to others in their turn this indulgence.

Hired mourners at a funeral say and do - A little more than they whose grief is true

A tragedy can never suffer by delay: a comedy may, because the allusions or the manners represented in it maybe temporary.

We are deceived by the appearance of right.

Leave the rest to the gods.

Man learns more readily and remembers more willingly what excites his ridicule than what deserves esteem and respect.

For example, the tiny ant, a creature of great industry, drags with its mouth whatever it can, and adds it to the heap which she is piling up, not unaware nor careless of the future.

Usually the modest person passes for someone reserved, the silent for a sullen person

The avarice person is ever in want; let your desired aim have a fixed limit.

Think of Zen, of the Void, of Good and Evil and you are bound hand and foot. Think only and entirely and completely of what you are doing at the moment and you are free as a bird.

God listens for nothing so tenderly, as when His children help each other by their testimonies to His goodness and the way in which He has brought them deliverance.

To act with common sense according to the moment, is the best wisdom I know.

He that cuts off twenty years of life Cuts off so many years of fearing death.

He who speaks ill of an absent friend, or fails to take his part if attacked by another, that man is a scoundrel.

He who has made it a practice to lie and deceive his father, will be the most daring in deceiving others.

Time will bring to light whatever is hidden it will cover up and conceal what is now shining in splendor.

A haiku is the expression of a temporary enlightenment, in which we see into the life of things.

Help a man against his will and you do the same as murder him.

There are lessons to be learned from a stupid man.

If evil is inevitable, how are the wicked accountable? Nay, why do we call men wicked at all? Evil is inevitable, but is also remediable.

On entering this world our starting-point is ignorance. None, however, but idiots remain there.

Jazz is not background music.

You may as well borrow a person's money as his time.

I am frightened at seeing all the footprints directed towards thy den, and none returning.

Suffering is but another name for the teaching of experience, which is the parent of instruction and the schoolmaster of life.

It is the false shame of fools to try to conceal wounds that have not healed.

The envious man grows lean at the success of his neighbor.

A stomach that is seldom empty despises common food. [Lat., Jejunus raro stomachus vulgaria temnit.]

One gains universal applause who mingles the useful with the agreeable, at once delighting and instructing the reader.

Not even piety will stay wrinkles, nor the encroachments of age, nor the advance of death, which cannot be resisted.

Ten men have failed from defect in morals, where one has failed from defect in intellect.

Virtue consists in fleeing vice.

Great books are written for Christianity much oftener than great deeds are done for it. City libraries tell us of the reign of Jesus Christ but city streets tell us of the reign of Satan.

We do ourselves the most good doing something for others.

The earth flourishes, or is overrun with noxious weeds and brambles, as we apply or withhold the cultivating hand. So fares it with the intellectual system of man.

Fortune makes a fool of those she favors too much.

Every school boy and school girl who has arrived at the age of reflection ought to know something about the history of the art of printing.

Wherever the storm carries me, I go a willing guest.

Anger is short-lived madness.

The lofty pine is oftenest shaken by the winds; High towers fall with a heavier crash; And the lightning strikes the highest mountain.

Anger is a brief lunacy.

Sport begets tumultuous strife and wrath, and wrath begets fierce quarrels and war to the death.

No, but you're wrong now, and always will be.

Morality and religion are but words to him who fishes in gutters for the means of sustaining life, and crouches behind barrels in the street for shelter from the cutting blasts of a winter night.

It is of no consequence of what parents a man is born, as long as he be a man of merit.

Poets wish to profit or to please.

Apathy is a sort of living oblivion.