Horace

No poems can please for long or live that are written by water drinkers.

Anger is a brief lunacy.

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

One night awaits all, and death’s path must be trodden once and for all.

Your own safety is at stake when your neighbor’s house is in flames.

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

The universal regard for money is the one hopeful fact in our civilization. Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity and beauty. Not the least of its virtues is that it destroys base people as certainly as it fortifies and dignifies noble people.

The first thing a great person does, is make us realize the insignificance of circumstance.

Looking? Found someone you have, eh?

The country life is to be preferred, for there we see the works of God; but in cities little else but the works of men. And the one makes a better subject for contemplation than the other.

I desire no future that will break the ties with the past.

The foolish are like ripples on water, For whatsoever they do is quickly effaced; But the righteous are like carvings upon stone, For their smallest act is durable.

Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.

It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.

A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.

Kings are not born they are made by universal hallucination.

I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor.

Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.

Books are delightful society. If you go into a room and find it full of books – even without taking them from the shelves they seem to speak to you, to bid you welcome.

Self-sacrifice is the real miracle out of which all the reported miracles grow.

There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits not because recompense is a pleasure for them, but because obligation is a pain.