Horace Quotes

A heart well prepared for adversity in bad times hopes, and in good times fears for a change in fortune.

Tis pleasant to have a large heap to take from.

Be prepared to go mad with fixed rule and method.

Work at it night and day.

There are as many preferences as there are men.

Money amassed either serves us or rules us.

Mistakes are their own instructors

Painters and poets have equal license in regard to everything.

Virtue consists in fleeing vice.

You may drive out nature with a pitchfork, yet she'll be constantly running back.

Wine brings to light the hidden secrets of the soul, gives being to our hopes, bids the coward flight, drives dull care away, and teaches new means for the accomplishment of our wishes.

Nothing's beautiful from every point of view.

His anger is easily excited and appeased, and he changes from hour to hour.

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

Dispel the cold, bounteously replenishing the hearth with logs.

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

Is virtue raised by culture, or self-sown?

He who has lost his money-belt will go where you wish.

To teach is to delight.

What is wealth to me if I cannot enjoy it?

I am not bound over to swear allegiance to any master; where the storm drives me I turn in for shelter.

Mighty to inspire new hopes, and able to drown the bitterness of cares.

If matters go badly now, they will not always be so.

Fortune, delighting in her cruel task, and playing her wanton game untiringly, is ever shifting her uncertain favours.

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

The Muse gave the Greeks genius and the art of the well-turned phrase.

Marble statues, engraved with public inscriptions, by which the life and soul return after death to noble leaders.

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

By the favour of the heavens

Patience lightens the burthen we cannot avert.

The man who is tenacious of purpose in a rightful cause is not shaken from his firm resolve by the frenzy of his fellow citizens clamoring for what is wrong, or by the tyrant's threatening countenance.

They change their sky, not their mind, who cross the sea. A busy idleness possesses us: we seek a happy life, with ships and carriages: the object of our search is present with us.

Acquittal of the guilty damns the judge.

What do sad complaints avail if the offense is not cut down by punishment.

Better wilt thou live...by neither always pressing out to sea nor too closely hugging the dangerous shore in cautious fear of storms.

Not gods, nor men, nor even booksellers have put up with poets' being second-rate.

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

Who then is sane? He who is not a fool.

He who is upright in his way of life and free from sin.

Don't carry logs into the forest.

No one is born without vices, and he is the best man who is encumbered with the least.

Betray not a secret even though racked by wine or wrath.

One cannot know everything.

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

What can be found equal to modesty, uncorrupt faith, the sister of justice, and undisguised truth?

Death is the ultimate boundary of human matters.

One goes to the right, the other to the left; both are wrong, but in different directions.

Believe it, future generations.