Horace

Why do you hasten to remove anything which hurts your eye, while if something affects your soul you postpone the cure until next year?

In peace, as a wise man, he should make suitable preparation for war.

As a rule, adversity reveals genius and prosperity hides it.

It is your business when the wall next door catches fire.

If a better system is thine, impart it; if not, make use of mine.

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

The report of my death was an exaggeration.

There are innumerable questions to which the inquisitive mind can in this state receive no answer: Why do you and I exist? Why was this world created? Since it was to be created, why was it not created sooner?

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.

On with dance, let joy be unconfined, is my motto; whether there’s any dance to dance or any joy to unconfined.

If any man cannot feel the power of God when he looks upon the stars, then I doubt whether he is capable of any feeling at all. [Ut haec ipsa qui non sentiat deorum vim habere is nihil omnino sensurus esse videatur.]

That which we do not believe, we cannot adequately say; even though we may repeat the words ever so often.

The endearing elegance of female friendship.

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my own constitution; the only wrong what is against it.

Life is too precious to be spent in this weaving and unweaving of false impressions, and it is better to live quietly under some degree of misrepresentation than to attempt to remove it by the uncertain process of letter-writing.

You don’t get respect if you don’t deserve it

In order to fully realize how bad a popular play can be, it is necessary to see it twice.

A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face; it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures; it is the finest of the fine arts.

I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.

You must not suppose, because I am a man of letters, that I never tried to earn an honest living.

Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party.