Horace

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

Gold will be slave or master.

Strange – is it not? That of the myriads who Before us passed the door of Darkness through, Not one returns to tell us of the road Which to discover we must travel too.

What fugitive from his country can also escape from himself.

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

Why harass with eternal purposes a mind to weak to grasp them?

Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language.

Such as take lodgings in a head that’s to be let unfurnished.

The ordinary man is an anarchist. He wants to do as he likes. He may want his neighbor to be governed, but he himself doesn’t want to be governed. He is mortally afraid of government officials and policemen.

Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.

As to the rout that is made about people who are ruined by extravagance, it is no matter to the nation that some individuals suffer. When so much general productive exertion is the consequence of luxury, the nation does not care though there are debtors; nay, they would not care though their creditors were there too.

Human beliefs, like all other natural growths, elude the barrier of systems.

Life grants nothing to us mortals without hard work.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted… but to weigh and consider.

The pencil of the Holy Ghost hath labored more in describing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon.

Beauty rests on necessities.

If a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his hand, no doubt we should pity the state of his mind; but our primary consideration would be to take care of ourselves. We should knock him down first, and pity him afterwards.

I hate mankind, for I think of myself as one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.

Concentration is the secret of strength in politics, in war, in trade, in short, in all the management of human affairs.

I was afraid that by observing objects with my eyes and trying to comprehend them with each of my other senses I might blind my soul altogether.