A Quote by Horace

A comic matter cannot be expressed in tragic verse. [Lat., Versibus exponi tragicis res comica non vult.]

Horace

Quote Topics

Cannot Comic Expressed Matter Tragic Verse

Quote Author

Horace
Roman - Poet
65 BC - 8 BC

the true art of the gods is the comic. The comic is a condescension of the divine to the world of man; it is the sublime vision, which cannot be studied, but must ever be celestially granted. In the comic the gods see their own being reflected as in a mirror, and while the tragic poet is bound by strict laws, they will allow the comic artist a freedom as unlimited as their own.

Isak Dinesen

He who would eat the kernel, must crack the shell. [Lat., Qui e nuce nucleum esse vult, frangat nucem.]

Plautus

Keep what you have got; the known evil is best. [Lat., Habeas ut nactus; nota mala res optima est.]

Plautus

You little know what a ticklish thing it is to go to law. [Lat., Nescis tu quam meticulosa res sit ire ad judicem.]

Plautus

Whereas the comic confronts simply logical contradictions, the tragic confronts a moral predicament. Not minor matters of true andfalse but crucial questions of right and wrong, good and evil face the tragic character in a tragic situation.

Marie Taylor Collins Swabey

They do not easily rise whose abilities are repressed by poverty at home. [Lat., Haud facile emergunt quorum virtutibus obstat Res angusta domi.]

Juvenal

America is said to be the arena on which the battle of freedom is to be fought; but surely it cannot be freedom in a merely political sense that is meant. Even if we grant that the American has freed himself from a political tyrant, he is still the slave of an economical and moral tyrant. Now that the republic--the res- publica--has been settled, it is time to look after the res- privata,--the private state,--to see, as the Roman Senate charged its consuls, "ne quid res-PRIVATA detrimenti caperet," that the private state receive no detriment.

Henry David Thoreau

Friendship makes prosperity brighter, while it lightens adversity by sharing its griefs and anxieties. [Lat., Secundas res splendidiores facit amicitia, et adversas partiens communicansque leviores.]

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Things sacred should not only be touched with the hands, but unviolated in thought. [Lat., Res sacros non modo manibus attingi, sed ne cogitatione quidem violari fas fuit.]

Marcus Tullius Cicero

For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed. The riddle does not exist.

Paul Watzlawick

The blues is an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one's aching consciousness, to finger its jagged grain, and to transcend it, not by the consolation of philosophy but by squeezing from it a near-tragic, near-comic lyricism. As a form, the blues is an autobiographical chronicle of personal catastrophe expressed lyrically.

Ralph Ellison

And I endeavour to subdue circumstances to myself, and not myself to circumstances. [Lat., Et mihi res, non me rebus, subjungere conor.]

Horace

My hopes are not always realized, but I always hope. [Lat., Et res non semper, spes mihi semper adest.]

Ovid

Prosperity can change man's nature; and seldom is any one cautious enough to resist the effects of good fortune. [Lat., Res secundae valent commutare naturam, et raro quisquam erga bona sua satis cautus est.]

Quintus Curtius Rufus

For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed. The riddle does not exist. If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered.