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
men difficult accomplish
Nothing is so difficult but that man will accomplish it.
difficulty explanation
The explanation avails nothing, which in leading us from one difficulty involves us in another.
speak difficult universal
It is difficult to speak of the universal specifically.
heaven strive difficult
Nothing is difficult to mortals; we strive to reach heaven itself in our folly. [Lat., Nil mortalibus arduum est; Coelum ipsum petimus stultitia.]
illustration settling difficulty
The illustration which solves one difficulty by raising another, settles nothing. [Lat., Nil agit exemplum, litem quod lite resolvit.]
worthy difficulty intervention
Nor let a god come in, unless the difficulty be worthy of such an intervention. [Lat., Nec deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus.]
anger feelings difficult
My liver swells with bile difficult to repress.
difficult dies
It is far more difficult, I assure you, to live for the truth than to die for it.
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.