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
ambition loss desire
Who has courage to say no again and again to desires, to despise the objects of ambition, who is a whole in himself, smoothed and rounded.
ambition heaven storm
Nothing is too high for the daring of mortals: we storm heaven itself in our folly.
stars ambition strikes
I shall strike the stars with my unlifted head.
grief ambition hands
Great grief makes sacred those upon whom its hand is laid. Joy may elevate, ambition glorify, but sorrow alone can consecrate.
ambition feet necks
Oh that I were seated as high as my ambition, I'd place my naked foot on the necks of monarchs.
spring ambition men
Enslave a man and you destroy his ambition, his enterprise, his capacity. In the constitution of human nature, the desire of bettering one's condition is the mainspring of effort. The first touch of slavery snaps this spring.
ambition men devil
The devil tempts men through their ambition, their cupidity, or their appetite, until he comes to the profane swearer, whom he clutches without any reward.
guilty pale secrets turn wall
Be this your wall of brass, to have no guilty secrets, no wrong-doing that makes you turn pale
struggle
I struggle to be brief, and I become obscure.
died pride vain
Vain was the chief's, the sage's pride! They had no poet, and they died
fools-and-foolishness good mix silly
Mix a little foolishness with your prudence: it's good to be silly at the right moment. (Odes, bk. 4, no. 12, l. 27)
fools-and-foolishness lovely mix moment serious silly
Mix a little foolishness with your serious plans; it's lovely to be silly at the right moment
absurd birth mountains
Mountains will be in labour, and the birth will be an absurd little mouse.
fathers though
Though guiltless, you must expiate your fathers' sins.