Horace

Leave the rest to the gods.

Your own safety is at stake when your neighbor’s wall is ablaze.

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

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

Words will not fail when the matter is well considered.

Justice though moving with tardy pace, has seldom failed to overtake the wicked in their flight.

Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

The years as they pass plunder us of one thing after another.

It is generally a feminine eye that first detects the moral deficiencies hidden under the dear deceit of beauty.

People do not deserve to have good writings; they are so pleased with the bad.

The physical world, including our bodies, is a response of the observer. We create our bodies as we create the experience of our world.

It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.

He may justly be numbered among the benefactors of mankind, who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may early be impressed on the memory, and taught by frequent recollection to occur habitually to the mind.

A man’s style is his mind’s voice. Wooden minds, wooden voices.

It were better to be of no church, than to be bitter for any.

I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.

If thou wouldst rule well, thou must rule for God; and to do that, thou must be ruled by him who has given to kings his grace to command themselves and their subjects, and to the people the grace to obey God and their kings.

Man is the only animal of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid of.

We must annex those people. We can afflict them with our wise and beneficent government. We can introduce the novelty of thieves, all the way up from street-car pickpockets to municipal robbers and Government defaulters, and show them how amusing it is to arrest them and try them and then turn them loose – some for cash and some for political influence. We can make them ashamed of their simple and primitive justice. We can make that little bunch of sleepy islands the hottest corner on earth, and array it in the moral splendor of our high and holy civilization. Annexation is what the poor islanders need. Shall we to men benighted, the lamp of life deny?

The ancients recommended us to sacrifice to the Graces, but Milton sacrificed to the Devil.

In the morning a man walks with his whole body; in the evening, only with his legs.