Horace

Mix a little foolishness with your serious plans. It is lovely to be silly at the right moment.

Life grants nothing to us mortals without hard work.

It is of no consequence of what parents a man is born, as long as he be a man of merit.

Tear thyself from delay.

You must often make erasures if you mean to write what is worthy of being read a second time; and don’t labor for the admiration of the crowd, but be content with a few choice readers.

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

The best way to be boring is to leave nothing out.

Equivocation is half-way to lying, and lying the whole way to hell.

Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.

Wickedness is always easier than virtue, for it takes a short cut to everything.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience!

The doctor learns that if he gets ahead of the superstitions of his patients he is a ruined man; and the result is that he instinctively takes care not to get ahead of them.

The next best thing to saying a good thing yourself, is to quote one.

Courage charms us, because it indicates that a man loves an idea better than all things in the world, that he is thinking neither of his bed, nor his dinner, nor his money, but will venture all to put in act the invisible thought of his mind.

You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.

Children are all foreigners.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.

Gratitude is a debt which usually goes on accumulating like blackmail; the more you pay, the more is exacted. In time, you are made to realize that the kindness done you is become a curse and you wish it had not happened.

She was taken by surprise at quite how breathtaking the twinkle in her eyes was. She listened and watched attentively, magnetized. As butterflies danced on her lips, her own stomach felt butterflies.

Don’t think of yourself as indispensable or infallible. As Charles De Gaulle said, the cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men.