Horace

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

A heart well prepared for adversity in bad times hopes, and in good times fears for a change in fortune.

Clogged with yesterday’s excess, the body drags the mind down with it.

Anger is a brief lunacy.

When you introduce a moral lesson, let it be brief.

Those who cross the sea change only the climate, not their character.

When you’ve told someone that you’ve left them a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once.

No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of spring.

The majority have no other reason for their opinions than that they are the fashion.

There is this to be said in favor of drinking, that it takes the drunkard first out of society, then out of the world.

To act with doubleness towards a man whose own conduct was double, was so near an approach to virtue that it deserved to be called by no meaner name than diplomacy.

Great people are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.

How we glow over these novels of passion, when the story is told with any spark of truth and nature! And what fastens attention, in the intercourse of life, like any passage betraying affection between two parties? Perhaps we never saw them before and never shall meet them again. But we see them exchange a glance or betray a deep emotion, and we are no longer strangers. We understand them and take the warmest interest in the development of the romance. All mankind love a lover.

The person is a poor judge who by an action can be disgraced more in failing than they can be honored in succeeding.

There is not human being from whom we cannot learn something if we are interested enough to dig deep.

Burning logs can carry on quite a conversation! … Have you ever heard apple wood talking? It’s the most loquacious of all. You really can’t get a word in edgeways.

A monarch, when good, is entitled to the consideration which we accord to a pirate who keeps Sunday School between crimes; when bad, he is entitled to none at all.

Finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two. This you cannot do without temperance.

A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly.

All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.

Everyone has the right to be stupid on occasion, but Comrade Macdonald abuses the privilege.