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
desire naked camps
Naked I seek the camp of those who desire nothing.
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.
desire gold cups
When your throat is parched with thirst, do you desire a cup of gold?
desire care riches
Increasing wealth is attended by care and by the desire of greater increase.
names desire imperfect
However rich or elevated, a name less something is always wanting to our imperfect fortune.
desire
Be not for ever harassed by impotent desire.
desire want enough
He who has enough for his wants should desire nothing more.
attempting cold desire inspiring pupil teacher
The teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron.
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.