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
excellence sometimes excellent
Sometimes even excellent Homer nods.
sometimes worthy
Even the worthy Homer sometimes nods.
sometimes caught
Even the good Homer is sometimes caught napping.
women sometimes enough
I have sometimes seen women, who would have been sensible enough, if they would have been content not to be called women of sense--but by aiming at what they had not, they only proved absurd--for sense cannot be counterfeited.
love-is few-words sometimes
When love is full grown it has few words, and sometimes it growls them out.
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.
disgrace greek-poet keeps
The disgrace of others often keeps tender minds from vice.