Horace Quotes

222 Sourced Quotes

Boys must not have th' ambitious care of men,
Nor men the weak anxieties of age.

Horace
Our years Glide silently away. No tears, No loving orisons repair The wrinkled cheek, the whitening hair That drop forgotten to the tomb.

Horace
Let us both small and great push forward in this work, in this pursuit, if to our country, if to ourselves we would live dear.

Horace
There is a mean in things, fixed limits on either side of which right living cannot get a foothold.

Horace
The brave are born from the brave and good. In steers and in horses is to be found the excellence of their sire; nor do savage eagles produce a peaceful dove.

Horace
Receive, dear friend, the truths I teach,
So shalt thou live beyond the reach
Of adverse Fortune's pow'r;
Not always tempt the distant deep,
Nor always timorously creep
Along the treach'rous shore.

Horace
With equal pace, impartial Fate
Knocks at the palace, as the cottage gate.

Horace
Shun to seek what is hid in the womb of the morrow, and set down as gain in life's ledger whatever time fate shall have granted thee.

Horace
Keep clear of courts: a homely life transcends The vaunted bliss of monarchs and their friends.

Horace
He, that holds fast the golden mean,
And lives contentedly between
The little and the great,
Feels not the wants that pinch the poor,
Nor plagues that haunt the rich man's door,
Imbitt'ring all his state.

Horace
Care clings to wealth: the thirst for more Grows as our fortunes grow.

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

Horace
When a man is just and firm in his purpose,
The citizens burning to approve a wrong
Or the frowning looks of a tyrant
Do not shake his fixed mind, nor the Southwind.
Wild lord of the uneasy Adriatic,
Nor the thunder in the mighty hand of Jove:
Should the heavens crack and tumble down,
As the ruins crushed him he would not fear.

Horace
You may turn nature out of doors with violence, but she will still return.

Horace
All else-valor, a good name, glory, everything in heaven and earth-is secondary to the charm of riches.

Horace
As they put it in Greek, we simply don't COUNT. We consume.

Horace
Silver is less valuable than gold, gold than virtue.
[Lat., Vilius argentum est auro virtutibus aurum.]

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

Horace
Poets, the first instructors of mankind,
Brought all things to the proper native use.

Horace
The changing year's successive plan Proclaims mortality to man.

Horace
Why then should words challenge Eternity, When greatest men, and greatest actions die? Use may revive the obsoletest words, And banish those that now are most in vogue; Use is the judge, the law, and rule of speech.

Horace
Wise were the kings who never chose a friend till with full cups they had unmasked his soul, and seen the bottom of his deepest thoughts.

Horace