Horace

He is armed without who is innocent within, be this thy screen, and this thy wall of brass.

To have a great man for a friend seems pleasant to those who have never tried it; those who have, fear it.

Fidelity is the sister of justice.

If a man’s fortune does not fit him, it is like the shoe in the story; if too large it trips him up, if too small it pinches him.

He tosses aside his paint-pots and his words a foot and a half long.

A portion of mankind take pride in their vices and pursue their purpose; many more waver between doing what is right and complying with what is wrong.

As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.

He looks the whole world in the face for he owes not any man.

I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I’m going is what inspires me to travel it.

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

You will know (the good from the bad) when you are calm, at peace. Passive.

There is only one thing about which I shall have no regrets when my life ends. I have savored to the full all the small, daily joys. The bright sunshine on the breakfast table; the smell of the air at dusk; the sound of the clock ticking; the light rains that start gently after midnight; the hour when the family come home; Sunday-evening tea before the fire! I have never missed one moment of beauty, not even taken it for granted. Spring, summer, autumn, or winter. I wish I had failed as little in other ways.

Nations! What are nations? Tartars! and Huns! and Chinamen! Like insects they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them memorable. It is for want of a man that there are so many men. It is individuals that populate the world.

Any government is free to the people under it (whatever be the frame) where the law rules, and the people are a party to those laws, and more than this is tyranny, oligarchy, or confusion.

The key to the age may be this, or that, or the other, as the young orators describe; the key to all ages is – Imbecility; imbecility in the vast majority of men, at all times, and, even in heroes, in all but certain eminent moments; victims of gravity, custom, and fear.

I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same mind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.

We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.

To die is but to leave off dying and do the thing once for all.

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.

The man is either mad, or he is making verses.

When death comes it is never our tenderness that we repent from, but our severity.