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
punishment tyrants envy
The envious pine at others' success; no greater punishment than envy was devised by Sicilian tyrants.
mean envy golden
Whoever cultivates the golden mean avoids both the poverty of a hovel and the envy of a palace.
horse envy lazy
The ox longs for the gaudy trappings of the horse; the lazy pack-horse would fain plough. [We envy the position of others, dissatisfied with our own.]
envy silence crow
If the crow had been satisfied to eat his prey in silence, he would have had more meat and less quarreling and envy.
envy
Envy is not to be conquered but by death.
mean envy safe
Who loves the golden mean is safe from the poverty of a tenement, is free from the envy of a palace. [Lat., Auream quisquis mediocritatem deligit tutus caret obsoleti sordibus tecti, caret invidenda sobrius aula.]
mean envy golden
There is a proper measure in all things, certain limits beyond which and short of which right is not to be found. Who so cultivates the golden mean avoids the poverty of a hovel and the envy of a palace.
envy competition crow
Had the crow only fed without cawing she would have had more to eat, and much less of strife and envy to contend with. [To noise abroad our success is to invite envy and competition.]
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.