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
grief men limits
What impropriety or limit can there be in our grief for a man so beloved?.
limits fixed
There is a measure in everything. There are fixed limits beyond which and short of which right cannot find a resting place.
limits certain mediums
There is a medium in all things. There are certain limits beyond, or within which, that which is right cannot exist.
mean limits virtue
There is a mean in all things; even virtue itself has stated limits; which not being strictly observed, it ceases to be virtue.
death lasts limits
Death is the last limit of all things.
retirement struggle limits
Let's put a limit to the scramble for money. ... Having got what you wanted, you ought to begin to bring that struggle to an end.
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.
fathers though
Though guiltless, you must expiate your fathers' sins.
approval greek-poet pleasant
He gains everyone's approval who mixes the pleasant with the useful.