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
matter failing wells
Words will not fail when the matter is well considered.
bears shoulders wells
Weigh well what your shoulders can and cannot bear.
speech wells subjects
When you have well thought out your subject, words will come spontaneously.
ordinary made wells
You will have written exceptionally well if, by skilful arrangement of your words, you have made an ordinary one seem original.
ability equal wells
Consider well what your strength is equal to, and what exceeds your ability.
done half wells
What's well begun is half done.
writing style wells
The best style of writing, as well as the most forcible, is the plainest.
teaching neglected wells
Great knowledge is requisite to instruct those who have been well instructed, but still greater knowledge is requisite to instruct those who have been neglected.
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.