Horace

A shoe that is too large is apt to trip one, and when too small, to pinch the feet. So it is with those whose fortune does not suit them.

Anger is a momentary madness, so control your passion or it will control you.

The pen is the tongue of the mind.

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

If you wish me to weep, you must first show grief yourself.

Tear thyself from delay.

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.

As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep and never to refrain when awake.

Allow children to be happy in their own way, for what better way will they find?

He was doing missionary work. But from the outset he had little success in convincing his charges of their responsibility for a sin committed at the beginning of creation, one which, as they understood it, they were ready and capable (indeed, they carried charms to assure it) of duplicating themselves. He did no better convincing them that a man had died on a tree to save them all: an act which one old Indian, if Gwyon had translated correctly, regarded as “rank presumption”.

Suspicion amongst thoughts are like bats amongst birds, they never fly by twilight.

The laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day.

It is possible to have a strong self-love without any self-satisfaction, rather with a self-discontent which is the more intense because one’s own little core of egoistic sensibility is a supreme care.

The ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.

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

We, unaccustomed to courage exiles from delight live coiled in shells of loneliness until love leaves its high holy temple and comes into our sight to liberate us into life. Love arrives and in its train come ecstasies old memories of pleasure ancient histories of pain. Yet if we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls. We are weaned from our timidity In the flush of love’s light we dare be brave And suddenly we see that love costs all we are and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.

The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.

If you can’t get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you’d best teach it to dance.

Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

To get a name can happen but to few; it is one of the few things that cannot be brought. It is the free gift of mankind, which must be deserved before it will be granted, and is at last unwillingly bestowed.