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
undoing
We do ourselves the most good doing something for others.
kindness missing undoing
We must be purposely kind and generous or we miss the best part of life's existence.
may cost praise
You may be liberal in your praise where praise is due: it costs nothing; it encourages much.
punishment evil prevention
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it can never be made impulsive to good.
children mean bread-of-life
There may be frugality which is not economy. A community, that withholds the means of education from its children, withholds the bread of life and starves their souls.
men greatness forget
If any man seeks for greatness, let him forget greatness and ask for truth, and he will find both.
mean raw-materials human-nature
Under the Providence of God, our means of education are the grand machinery by which the 'raw material' of human nature can be worked up into inventors and discoverers, into skilled artisans and scientific farmers, into scholars and jurists, into the founders of benevolent institutions, and the great expounders of ethical and theological science.
wise knowledge land
It is well when the wise and the learned discover new truths; but how much better to diffuse the truths already discovered amongst the multitudes. Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power; and while a philosopher is discovering one new truth, millions of truths may be propagated amongst the people.... The whole land must be watered with the streams of knowledge.
weed men hands
The earth flourishes, or is overrun with noxious weeds and brambles, as we apply or withhold the cultivating hand. So fares it with the intellectual system of man.
time causes youth
Time is a seedfield; in youth we sow it with causes; in after life we reap the harvest of effects.
book giving house
Give me a house furnished with books rather than furniture! Both, if you can, but books at any rate!
ignorance soul ignorant
Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up the vacancies of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge.
parent sacred causes
We who are engaged in the sacred cause of education are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause.
adversity evil mercy
Much that we call evil is really good in disguises; and we should not quarrel rashly with adversities not yet understood, nor overlook the mercies often bound up in them.