Famous Quotes

Quotes by Horace

• A heart well prepared for adversity in bad times hopes, and in good times fears for a change in fortune.
• A human being is not attaining his full heights until he is educated.
• A picture is a poem without words.
• A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron.
• Alexander at the head of the world never tasted the true pleasure that boys of his own age have enjoyed at the head of a school.
• Anger is a short madness.
• By deafness one gains in one respect more than one loses one misses more nonsense than sense.
• Cease to inquire what the future has in store, and take as a gift whatever the day brings forth.
• Courage is the fear of being thought a coward.
• Education alone can conduct us to that enjoyment which is, at once, best in quality and infinite in quantity.
• Education is our only political safety. Outside of this ark all is deluge.
• Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance-wheel of the social machinery.
• Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power.
• Few cross the river of time and are able to reach non-being. Most of them run up and down only on this side of the river. But those who when they know the law follow the path of the law, they shall reach the other shore and go beyond the realm of death.
• Generosity during life is a very different thing from generosity in the hour of death one proceeds from genuine liberality and benevolence, the other from pride or fear.
• Great effort is required to arrest decay and restore vigor. One must exercise proper deliberation, plan carefully before making a move, and be alert in guarding against relapse following a renaissance.
• He has not lived badly whose birth and death has been unnoticed by the world.
• I avoid talking before the youth of the age as I would dancing before them: for if one's tongue don't move in the steps of the day, and thinks to please by its old graces, it is only an object of ridicule.
• If any man seeks for greatness, let him forget greatness and ask for truth, and he will find both.
• Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he isn't. A sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.
• It is courage, courage, courage, that raises the blood of life to crimson splendor. Live bravely and present a brave front to adversity.
• It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth into a liar - that I call an achievement.
• It is your business when the wall next door catches fire.
• It's good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it's good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure that you haven't lost the things that money can't buy.
• Justice is rather the activity of truth, than a virtue in itself. Truth tells us what is due to others, and justice renders that due. Injustice is acting a lie.
• Knowledge without education is but armed injustice.
• Lawyers are men who hire out their words and anger.
• Life grants nothing to us mortals without hard work.
• Life is largely a matter of expectation.
• Money is a handmaiden, if thou knowest how to use it a mistress, if thou knowest not.
• No poems can please for long or live that are written by water drinkers.
• Oh, the ignorance of us upon whom Providence did not sufficiently smile to permit us to be born in New England.
• Pale Death beats equally at the poor man's gate and at the palaces of kings.
• Pale death, with impartial step, knocks at the hut of the poor and the towers of kings.
• Plot, rules, nor even poetry, are not half so great beauties in tragedy or comedy as a just imitation of nature, of character, of the passions and their operations in diversified situations.
• Poetry is a beautiful way of spoiling prose, and the laborious art of exchanging plain sense for harmony.
• Remember when life's path is steep to keep your mind even.