Horace
Horace
Quintus Horatius Flaccus, known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus. The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his Odes as just about the only Latin lyrics worth reading: "He can be lofty sometimes, yet he is also full of charm and grace, versatile in his figures, and felicitously daring in his choice of words."...
NationalityRoman
ProfessionPoet
speech action modest
Be modest in speech, but excel in action.
too-much fool favors
Fortune makes a fool of those she favors too much.
grief disease accents
There are words and accents by which this grief can be assuaged, and the disease in a great measure removed.
mind praise greedy
How slight and insignificant is the thing which casts down or restores a mind greedy for praise.
grammar cases disputes
Grammatici certant et adhuc sub iudice lis est. - Grammarians dispute, and the case it still before the courts.
giving asking tomorrow
Leave off asking what tomorrow will bring, and whatever days fortune will give, count them as profit.
trying fool shame
It is the false shame of fools to try to conceal wounds that have not healed.
grove
And seek for truth in the groves of Academe.
reality order mind
The aim of the poet is to inform or delight, or to combine together, in what he says, both pleasure and applicability to life. In instructing, be brief in what you say in order that your readers may grasp it quickly and retain it faithfully. Superfluous words simply spill out when the mind is already full. Fiction invented in order to please should remain close to reality.
succeed sat stills
He who feared that he would not succeed sat still.
father sunshine sky
I have lived: tomorrow the Father may fill the sky with black clouds or with cloudless sunshine.
arrows guilt defense
Virtue, dear friend, needs no defense, The surest guard is innocence: None knew, till guilt created fear, What darts or poisoned arrows were
cheer father taken
He possesses dominion over himself, and is happy, who can every day say, "I have lived." Tomorrow the heavenly father may either involve the world in dark clouds, or cheer it with clear sunshine, he will not, however, render ineffectual the things which have already taken place.
men lasts degrees
To please great men is not the last degree of praise.