Horace

What we learn only through the ears makes less impression upon our minds than what is presented to the trustworthy eye.

I teach that all men are mad.

A jest often decides matters of importance more effectual and happily than seriousness.

The foolish are like ripples on water, For whatsoever they do is quickly effaced; But the righteous are like carvings upon stone, For their smallest act is durable.

Pale death with an impartial foot knocks at the hovels of the poor and the palaces of king.

It is of no consequence of what parents a man is born, as long as he be a man of merit.

All colors will agree in the dark.

Wherever work is done, victory is attained.

The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier.

Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely. ‘Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the census, or by square miles of land, or other than by their importance to the mind of the time.

Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.

Stay at home in your mind. Don’t recite other people’s opinions. I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing.

God is better served in resisting a Temptation to Evil, than in many formal Prayers.

You are alive, so be fully alive.

He that gives good advice builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example builds with both.

Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.

You are perfect. An exquisitely fine work of art, labor of love, suspended in silence. Bejeweled, trembling, kissed by a breeze, mesmerized by your beauty. You await in silence, beckoning me to a silken-wrapped slumber.

Our most important task is to transform our consciousness so that violence is no longer an option for us in our personal lives, that understanding that a world of peace is possible only if we relate to each other as peaceful beings, one individual at a time.

As there is a use in medicine for poisons, so the world cannot move without rogues.

There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.