Horace

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

Nothing is too high for the daring of mortals: we storm heaven itself in our folly.

One gains universal applause who mingles the useful with the agreeable, at once delighting and instructing the reader.

Let your literary compositions be kept from the public eye for nine years at least.

Live as brave men and face adversity with stout hearts.

Let us my friends snatch our opportunity from the passing day.

The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.

It is immoral to get drunk because the headache comes after the drinking, but if the headache came first and the drunkenness afterwards, it would be moral to get drunk.

All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients.

I trust no one, not even myself.

In this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it.

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.

The English never draw a line without blurring it.

Beware what you set your heart upon. For it shall surely be yours.

The truest end of life is to know that life never ends.

Breed is stronger than pasture.

No man can be a pure specialist without being in the strict sense an idiot.

Only in the darkness can you see the stars.

The way to do well is to do well.

There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance: his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of feeling complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt.