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
hard-work brain nails
He will often have to scratch his head, and bite his nails to the quick. [To succeed he will have to puzzle his brains and work hard.]
brain idle deficiency
Where Labor stands idle ... there is a demonstrated deficiency, not of Capital, but of brains.
love brain crowds
Love not only occupies the higher lobes of the brain, but crowds out the lower to make room for its expansion.
thinking years brain
Do not think of knocking out another person's brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago.
book men brain
Books are all right, but dead men's brains are no good unless you mix a live one's with them.
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.
approval greek-poet pleasant
He gains everyone's approval who mixes the pleasant with the useful.
disgrace greek-poet keeps
The disgrace of others often keeps tender minds from vice.