Horace

Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled.

Take away the danger and remove the restraint, and wayward nature runs free.

We rarely find anyone who can say he has lived a happy life, and who, content with his life, can retire from the world like a satisfied guest.

A shoe that is too large is apt to trip one, and when too small, to pinch the feet. So it is with those whose fortune does not suit them.

It is a sweet and seemly thing to die for one’s country.

Labor diligently to increase your property.

The egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief.

What is the matter with the poor is poverty; what is the matter with the rich is uselessness.

Logic is like the sword

There are few minds to which tyranny is not delightful.

It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance toward it, though we know it can never be reached.

Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.

If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, who would escape hanging?

Meeting Franklin Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of champagne; knowing him was like drinking it.

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

It is better to walk alone, then with a crowd going in the wrong direction.

Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all of which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, even if religion vanished; but religious superstition dismounts all these and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men.

Nay, number itself in armies importeth not much, where the people is of weak courage; for, as Virgil saith, It never troubles the wolf how many the sheep be.

Pictures must not be too picturesque.

I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.

You can never really live anyone else’s life, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you’ve become yourself.