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
spring garden land
I prayed only for a small piece of land, a garden, an ever-flowing spring, and bit of woods.
land oxen yoke
Happy he who far from business persuits Tills and re-tills his ancestral lands With oxen of his own breeding Having no slavish yoke about his neck.
prayer garden land
This used to be among my prayers - a piece of land not so very large, which would contain a garden
book land wheat-fields
Had I the power, I would scatter libraries over the whole land, as the sower sows his wheat-field.
wise knowledge land
It is well when the wise and the learned discover new truths; but how much better to diffuse the truths already discovered amongst the multitudes. Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power; and while a philosopher is discovering one new truth, millions of truths may be propagated amongst the people.... The whole land must be watered with the streams of knowledge.
land want firsts
Beginning before you know what you want to say and keeping on after you have said it lands a merchant in a lawsuit or the poorhouse, and the first is a shortcut to the second.
guilty pale secrets turn wall
Be this your wall of brass, to have no guilty secrets, no wrong-doing that makes you turn pale
labor mountains mouse ridiculous
The mountains will be in labor, and a ridiculous mouse will be born.
crazy fools-and-foolishness
As crazy as hauling timber into the woods.
avoid cottage favourites greatness happiness kings
Avoid greatness; in a cottage there may be more real happiness than kings or their favourites enjoy.
bowl soul troubles within
Bacchus drowns within the bowl - Troubles that corrode the soul
fond illusion mock
Do you hear, or does some fond illusion mock me?
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