The poets aim is either to profit or to please, or to blend in one the delightful and the useful. Whatever the lesson you would convey, be brief, that your hearers may catch quickly what is said and faithfully retain it. Every superfluous word is spilled from the too-full memory.

Seek not to inquire what the morrow will bring with it.

A wise God shrouds the future in obscure darkness.

In neglected fields the fern grows, which must be cleared out by fire.

It is a sweet and seemly thing to die for one's country.

Don't yield to that alluring witch, laziness, or else be prepared to surrender all that you have won in your better moments.

Joys do not fall to the rich alone; nor has he lived ill of whose birth and death no one took note.