Horace

How great, my friends, is the virtue of living upon a little!

Life is largely a matter of expectation.

I shall strike the stars with my unlifted head.

We are free to yield to truth.

You must often make erasures if you mean to write what is worthy of being read a second time; and don’t labor for the admiration of the crowd, but be content with a few choice readers.

Usually the modest person passes for someone reserved, the silent for a sullen person.

The Holy Roman Empire is neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.

This is the foundation of all. We are not to imagine or suppose, but to discover, what nature does or may be made to do.

I had rather believe all the Fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a Mind.

The measure of who we are is what we do with what we have.

The eloquent man is he who is no eloquent speaker, but who is inwardly drunk with a certain belief.

Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while.

If men be good, government cannot be bad.

People wish to be settled. It is only as far as they are unsettled that there is any hope for them.

Shallow people believe in luck and in circumstances; Strong people believe in cause and effect.

Every man passes his life in the search after friendship.

I feel nothing but the accursed happiness I have dreaded all my life long: the happiness that comes as life goes, the happiness of yielding and dreaming instead of resisting and doing, the sweetness of the fruit that is going rotten.

None of us should be defined by the worst thing we’ve ever done.

I have not a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming vices.

Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others.

Fidelity has enfranchised slaves, and adopted servants to be sons.