Horace

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

No verse can give pleasure for long, nor last, that is written by drinkers of water.

Undeservedly you will atone for the sins of your fathers.

The disgrace of others often keeps tender minds from vice.

Nothing’s beautiful from every point of view.

He tosses aside his paint-pots and his words a foot and a half long.

When Satan makes impure verses, Allah sends a divine tune to cleanse them.

Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

I am admonished in many ways that time is pushing me inexorably along. I am approaching the threshold of age; in 1977 I shall be 142. This is no time to be flitting about the earth. I must cease from the activities proper to youth and begin to take on the dignities and gravities and inertia proper to that season of honorable senility which is on its way.

I am not an optimist, but a great believer of hope.

He has been a doctor a year now and has had two patients, no, three, I think – yes, it was three; I attended their funerals.

Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations.

Do not discourage your children from hoarding, if they have a taste to it; whoever lays up his penny rather than part with it for a cake, at least is not the slave of gross appetite; and shows besides a preference always to be esteemed, of the future to the present moment.

Who’s not sat tense before his own heart’s curtain.

Civilisation will not last, freedom will not survive, peace will not be kept, unless a very large majority of mankind unite together to defend them and show themselves possessed of a constabulary power before which barbaric and atavistic forces will stand in awe.

A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself.

There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope.

There be three things which make a nation great and prosperous: a fertile soil, busy workshops, easy conveyance for men and goods from place to place.

Errors look so very ugly in persons of small means – one feels they are taking quite a liberty in going astray; whereas people of fortune may naturally indulge in a few delinquencies.

Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles. What do we live for if not to make the world less difficult for each other?