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
fit fortune greek-poet large shoe small trips
If a man's fortune does not fit him, it is like the shoe in the story; if too large it trips him up, if too small it pinches him.
asking count everyday fortune grants happen refrain
Refrain from asking what is going to happen tomorrow, and everyday that fortune grants you, count as gain.
sports human-life fortune
Ah Fortune, what god is more cruel to us than thou! How thou delightest ever to make sport of human life!
truth moderation fortune
Receive, dear friend, the truths I teach, So shalt thou live beyond the reach Of adverse Fortune's pow'r; Not always tempt the distant deep, Nor always timorously creep Along the treach'rous shore.
wealth fortune nameless
Wealth increaseth, but a nameless something is ever wanting to our insufficient fortune.
adversity genius fortune
Adversity reveals the genius of a general; good fortune conceals it.
fortune incomplete
Something is always wanting to incomplete fortune. [Lat., Curtae nescio quid semper abest rei.]
money use fortune
Of what use is a fortune to me, if I cannot use it? [Lat., Quo mihi fortunam, si non conceditur uti?]
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.