Horace

What we learn only through the ears makes less impression upon our minds than what is presented to the trustworthy eye.

Refrain from asking what going to happen tomorrow, and everyday that fortune grants you, count as gain.

Anger is a brief lunacy.

Poets wish to profit or to please.

The disgrace of others often keeps tender minds from vice.

Live as brave men and face adversity with stout hearts.

There is no chance, and no anarchy, in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.

Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye.

When men come to like a sea-life, they are not fit to live on land.

Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need – a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.

A man is related to all nature.

People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.

To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position; and a robust candor never waited to be asked for its opinion.

Tell me who your heroes are and I’ll tell you who you’ll turn out to be.

I’m out there to clean the plate. Once they’ve read what I’ve written on a subject, I want them to think, ‘That’s it!’ I think the highest aspiration people in our trade can have is that once they’ve written a story, nobody will ever try it again.

It is easy to live for others, everybody does. I call on you to live for yourselves.

A word once uttered can never be recalled.

The chief mourner does not always attend the funeral.

Englishmen hate Liberty and Equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves a pedigree.

Often the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.

I have heard with admiring submission the experience of the lady who declared that the sense of being perfectly well dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility which religion is powerless to bestow.