Horace

A shoe that is too large is apt to trip one, and when too small, to pinch the feet. So it is with those whose fortune does not suit them.

Suffering is but another name for the teaching of experience, which is the parent of instruction and the schoolmaster of life.

He gains everyone’s approval who mixes the pleasant with the useful.

A heart well prepared for adversity in bad times hopes, and in good times fears for a change in fortune.

Anger is a momentary madness, so control your passion or it will control you.

Those who cross the sea change only the climate, not their character.

One farmer says to me, ‘You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with;’ and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle.

Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it. The man who knows how will always have a job. The man who also knows why will always be his boss.

If you aren’t fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.

A habit cannot be tossed out the window; it must be coaxed down the stairs a step at a time.

Real practice has no purpose or direction, so it can include everything that comes.

When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.

No one ever became great by imitation.

People usually think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and ingrained opinions, but generally act according to custom.

The cross of the Legion of Honor has been conferred on me. However, few escape that distinction.

The Athanasian Creed is to me light and intelligible reading in comparison with much that now passes for science.

Man gives every reason for his conduct save one, every excuse for his crimes save one, every plea for his safety save one; and that one is his cowardice.

We are just statistics, born to consume resources.

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.

More than once I had seen a noble who had gotten his enemy at a disadvantage stop to pray before cutting his throat.

The pen is the tongue of the mind.