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
running opposites fool
While fools shun one set of faults they run into the opposite one.
opposites trying faults
When we try to avoid one fault, we are led to the opposite, unless we be very careful.
opposites fool vices
In avoiding one vice fools rush into the opposite extreme.
lying opposites two
Virtue lies half way between two opposite vices.
should-have opposites race
Resistance to improvement contradicts the noblest instincts of the race. It begets its opposite. The fanaticism of reform is only the raging of the accumulated waters caused by the obstructions which an ultra conservatism has thrown across the stream of progress; and revolution itself is but the sudden overwhelming and sweeping away of impediments that should have been seasonably removed.
approval greek-poet pleasant
He gains everyone's approval who mixes the pleasant with the useful.
disgrace greek-poet keeps
The disgrace of others often keeps tender minds from vice.
greek-poet
He has the deed half done who has made a beginning.
discover greek-poet passed returns road strange travel
Strange - is it not? That of the myriads who Before us passed the door of Darkness through, Not one returns to tell us of the road Which to discover we must travel too.
greek-poet man
The man is either mad, or he is making verses.
greek-poet struggle
It is when I struggle to be brief that I become obscure.
fear great greek-poet man pleasant seems tried
To have a great man for a friend seems pleasant to those who have never tried it; those who have, fear it.
greek-poet time
I never think at all when I write. Nobody can do two things at the same time and do them both well.
among common greek-poet
This is a fault common to all singers, that among their friends they will never sing when they are asked; unasked, they will never desist.