Horace

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

The man is either mad, or he is making verses.

Refrain from asking what going to happen tomorrow, and everyday that fortune grants you, count as gain.

We are free to yield to truth.

How does it happen, Maecenas, that no one is content with that lot of which he has chosen or which chance has thrown his way, but praises those who follow a different course?

No poems can please for long or live that are written by water-drinkers.

When you know to laugh and when to look upon things as too absurd to take seriously, the other person is ashamed to carry through even if he was serious about it.

Them meaning of good and bad, of better and worse, is simply helping or hurting.

It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

I dip my pen in the blackest ink, because I am not afraid of falling into my inkpot.

He does not care for flowers. Calls them rubbish, and cannot tell one from another, and thinks it is superior to feel like that.

Rich men without convictions are more dangerous in modern society than poor women without chastity.

Beauty surrounds us, but usually we need to be walking in a garden to know it.

The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.

Tragedy was foresworn, in ritual denial of the ripe knowledge that we are drawing away from one another, that we share only one thing, share the fear of belonging to another, or to others, or to God; love or money, tender equated in advertising and the world, where only money is currency, and under dead trees and brittle ornaments prehensile hands exchange forgeries of what the heart dare not surrender.

The mind can go in a thousand directions, but on this beautiful path, I walk in peace.

Then spare the rod and spoil the child.

First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity: no really self-respecting woman would take advantage of it.

The giving of love is an education in itself.