Top 927 Quotes & Sayings by Horace - Page 15
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Roman poet Horace.
Last updated on April 22, 2025.
The changing year's successive plan Proclaims mortality to man.
Remember you must die whether you sit about moping all day long or whether on feast days you stretch out in a green field, happy with a bottle of Falernian from your innermost cellar.
Desiring things widely different for their various tastes.
Even virtue followed beyond reason's rule May stamp the just man knave, the sage a fool.
Nos numeros sumus et fruges consumere nati. We are but ciphers, born to consume earth's fruits.
The short span of life forbids us to take on far-reaching hopes.
Wise were the kings who never chose a friend till with full cups they had unmasked his soul, and seen the bottom of his deepest thoughts.
Sweet and glorious it is to die for our country.
And take back ill-polished stanzas to the anvil.
Dismiss the old horse in good time, lest he fail in the lists and the spectators laugh.
Little folks become their little fate.
Joys do not fall to the rich alone; nor has he lived ill of whose birth and death no one took note.
The Muse gave the Greeks genius and the art of the well-turned phrase.
The gods my protectors.
[Lat., Di me tuentur.]
Nor does Apollo keep his bow continually drawn.
[Lat., Neque semper arcum
Tendit Apollo.]
A pauper in the midst of wealth.
Dispel the cold, bounteously replenishing the hearth with logs.
The ear of the bridled horse is in the mouth.
Flames too soon acquire strength if disregarded.
Let him who has enough ask for nothing more.
There is nothing assured to mortals.
Avoid greatness in a cottage there may be more real happiness than kings or their favourites enjoy.
Thou oughtest to know, since thou livest near the gods.
[Lat., Scire, deos quoniam propius contingis, oportet.]
Enjoy thankfully any happy hour heaven may send you, nor think that your delights will keep till another year.
We are all gathered to the same fold.
Verses devoid of substance, melodious trifles.
[Lat., Versus inopes rerum, nugaeque canorae.]
Lighten grief with hopes of a brighter morrow; Temper joy, in fear of a change of fortune.
Is virtue raised by culture, or self-sown?
Gloriously false. [Like Rahab.]
Our years Glide silently away. No tears, No loving orisons repair The wrinkled cheek, the whitening hair That drop forgotten to the tomb.
It is not enough for poems to be fine; they must charm, and draw the mind of the listener at will.
A noble pair of brothers.
[Lat., Par nobile fratum.]
There are as many preferences as there are men.
God has joined the innocent with the guilty.
Let your poem be kept nine years.
Justice, though moving with tardy pace, has seldom failed to overtake the wicked in their flight.
[Lat., Raro antecedentem scelestum
Deseruit pede poena claudo.]
A wise God shrouds the future in obscure darkness.
Nor let a god come in, unless the difficulty be worthy of such an intervention.
[Lat., Nec deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus.]
Happy is the man to whom nature has given a sufficiency with even a sparing hand.
When you introduce a moral lesson, let it be brief.
You will not rightly call him a happy man who possesses much; he more rightly earns the name of happy who is skilled in wisely using the gifts of the gods, and in suffering hard poverty, and who fears disgrace as worse than death.
Death's dark way Must needs be trodden once, however we pause.
The impartial earth opens alike for the child of the pauper and the king.
What does drunkenness not accomplish? It unlocks secrets, confirms our hopes, urges the indolent into battle, lifts the burden from anxious minds, teaches new arts.
Had the crow only fed without cawing she would have had more to eat, and much less of strife and envy to contend with. [To noise abroad our success is to invite envy and competition.]
Despise not sweet inviting love-making nor the merry dance.
He who would reach the desired goal must, while a boy, suffer and labor much and bear both heat and cold.
[Lat., Qui studet optatam cursu coningere metam
Multa tulit fecitque puer, sudavit et alsit.]
A comic matter cannot be expressed in tragic verse.
[Lat., Versibus exponi tragicis res comica non vult.]
All else-valor, a good name, glory, everything in heaven and earth-is secondary to the charm of riches.
The short span of life forbids us to spin out hope to any length. Soon will night be upon you, and the fabled Shades, and the shadowy Plutonian home.
Mingle some brief folly with wisdom now: To be foolish is sweet at times.
I, too, am indignant when the worthy Homer nods; yet in a long work it is allowable for sleep to creep over the writer.
[Lat., Et idem
Indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus;
Verum opere longo fas est obrepere somnum.]
Content with his past life, let him take leave of life like a satiated guest.
Faults are committed within the walls of Troy and also without. [There is fault on both sides.]
In laboring to be concise, I become obscure.
[Lat., Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio.]
It is not enough that poetry is agreeable, it should also be interesting.
Get what start the sinner may, Retribution, for all her lame leg, never quits his track.
Fortune, delighting in her cruel task, and playing her wanton game untiringly, is ever shifting her uncertain favours.
Fierce eagles breed not the tender dove.
It is hard! But what can not be removed, becomes lighter through patience.
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