Horace

It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say; when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth into a liar – that I call an achievement.

I am not bound over to swear allegiance to any master; where the storm drives me I turn in for shelter.

If matters go badly now, they will not always be so.

There is nothing assured to mortals.

We rarely find anyone who can say he has lived a happy life, and who, content with his life, can retire from the world like a satisfied guest.

Let us my friends snatch our opportunity from the passing day.

We should come home from adventures and perils and discoveries with new experiences and character.

If you want the moon, do not hide from the night. If you want a rose, do not hide from the thorns. If you want love, do not hide from yourself.

There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses.

What a lot of things there are a man can do without.

The only gift is a portion of thyself.

I don’t think it’s meant for man to know everything at once.

Knowledge does not come to us in details, but in flashes of light from heaven.

Suspicion is most often useless pain.

It takes two to speak truth – one to speak, and another to hear.

Men know that women are an over-match for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.

Good poetry seems too simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

Whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can commit the least act of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it.

Self-command is the main discipline.

A man who has no office to go to – I don’t care who he is – is a trial of which you can have no conception.