Horace

We are free to yield to truth.

Be ever on your guard what you say of anybody and to whom.

The one who prosperity takes too much delight in will be the most shocked by reverses.

This is a fault common to all singers, that among their friends they will never sing when they are asked; unasked, they will never desist.

He will always be a slave who does not know how to live upon a little.

The envious man grows lean at the success of his neighbor.

I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?

The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness…

The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.

Don’t order any black things. Rejoice in his memory; and be radiant: leave grief to the children. Wear violet and purple. Be patient with the poor people who will snivel: they don’t know; and they think they will live for ever, which makes death a division instead of a bond.

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

Life too near paralyses art.

Only in the darkness can you see the stars.

People who are truly strong lift others up. People who are truly powerful bring others together.

This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

Some thoughts always find us young, and keep us so. Such a thought is the love of the universal and eternal beauty.

A stumbling block to the pessimist is a stepping-stone to the optimist.

We women are always in danger of living too exclusively in the affections; and though our affections are perhaps the best gifts we have, we ought also to have our share of the more independent life — some joy in things for their own sake. It is piteous to see the helplessness of some sweet women when their affections are disappointed — because all their teaching has been, that they can only delight in study of any kind for the sake of a personal love. They have never contemplated an independent delight in ideas as an experience which they could confess without being laughed at. Yet surely women need this defense against passionate affliction even more than men.

Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.