Horace

If you wish me to weep, you must first show grief yourself.

In the word of no master am I bound to believe.

A word once uttered can never be recalled.

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.

He who postpones the hour of living is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses.

You must avoid sloth, that wicked siren.

Courage can be contagious and hope can take on a life of its own.

An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.

We live thick and are in each other’s way, and stumble over one another, and I think we thus lose some respect for one another.

I believe in Michelangelo, Velasquez, and Rembrandt; in the might of design, the mystery of color, the redemption of all things by Beauty everlasting, and the message of Art that has made these hands blessed. Amen. Amen.

Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I’ve done it thousands of times.

Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.

What you don’t do can be a destructive force.

Don’t do or say things you would not like to see on the front page of The Washington Post.

With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.

I was born upon thy bank, river, my blood flows in thy stream, and thou meanderest forever. At the bottom of my dream.

That devilish Iron Horse, whose ear-rending neigh is heard throughout the town, has muddied the Boiling Spring with his foot, and he it is that has browsed off all the woods on Walden shore, that Trojan horse, with a thousand men in his belly, introduced by mercenary Greeks! Where is the country’s champion, the Moore of Moore Hall, to meet him at the Deep Cut and thrust an avenging lance between the ribs of the bloated pest?

Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance.

A woman’s heart must be of such a size and no larger, else it must be pressed small, like Chinese feet; her happiness is to be made as cakes are, by a fixed receipt.

I was not the lion, but it fell to me to give the lion’s roar.

Life is a disease; and the only difference between one man and another is the stage of the disease at which he lives. You are always at the crisis: I am always in the convalescent stage.