Horace

What we learn only through the ears makes less impression upon our minds than what is presented to the trustworthy eye.

He gains everyone’s approval who mixes the pleasant with the useful.

Patience makes lighter What sorrow may not heal.

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

Poets wish to profit or to please.

Let us my friends snatch our opportunity from the passing day.

When our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure them. But when they are away, we console ourselves for their absence by dwelling on their vices.

Children demand that their heroes should be freckleless, and easily believe them so: perhaps a first discovery to the contrary is less revolutionary shock to a passionate child than the threatened downfall of habitual beliefs which makes the world seem to totter for us in maturer life.

To watch this crystal globe just sent from heaven to associate with me. While these clouds and this somber drizzling weather shut all in, we two draw nearer and know one another. The gathering in of the clouds with the last rush and dying breath of the wind, and then the regular dripping of twigs and leaves the country over, the impression of inward comfort and Sociableness, the drenched stubble and trees that drop beads on you as you pass, their dim outline seen through the rain on all sides drooping in sympathy with yourself. These are my undisputed territory. This is Nature’s English comfort.

Softness has such a power to it. When you choose to soften into something, it relaxes, opens, tension releases. Stuck energy flows like blood coursing through veins, bringing much needed oxygen. Life force and warmth enters, connection is rekindled. Find the trust you need to allow softness in; it really is healing.

The seven deadly sins: Want of money, bad health, bad temper, chastity, family ties, knowing that you know things, and believing in the Christian religion.

After a few months’ acquaintance with European coffee, one’s mind weakens, and his faith with it, and he begins to wonder if the rich beverage of home, with its clotted layer of yellow cream on top of it, is not a mere dream after all, and a thing which never existed.

What is life but the angle of vision? A man is measured by the angle at which he looks at objects. What is life but what a man is thinking of all day? This is his fate and his employer. Knowing is the measure of the man. By how much we know, so much we are.

Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.

Aim for the moon. If you miss, you may hit a star.

Paradise was made for tender hearts; hell, for loveless hearts.

If you miss the present moment, you miss your appointment with life. That is very serious!

Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like diadems and authority, only to the highest rank. Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.

We mustn’t be stiff and stand-off, you know. We must be thoroughly democratic, and patronize everybody without distinction of class.

God enters by a private door into every individual.

Fidelity has enfranchised slaves, and adopted servants to be sons.