Memorable Quotes and quotations from Horace

Horace Roman lyric poet & satirist (65 BC - 8 BC)


Horace - Epistles
- He wins every hand who mingles profit with pleasure.

Horace - Satires
- 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.

Horace - Odes
- With you I should love to live, with you be ready to die.

Horace - Odes
- Many brave men lived before Agamemnon; but all are overwhelmed in eternal night, unwept, unknown, because they lack a sacred poet.

Horace - Odes
- Cease to ask what the morrow will bring forth. And set down as gain each day that Fortune grants.

Horace -
- The appearance of right oft leads us wrong.

Horace - Epistles
- To flee vice is the beginning of virtue, and to have got rid of folly is the beginning of wisdom.

Horace - Odes
- It is not the rich man you should properly call happy, but him who knows how to use with wisdom the blessings of the gods, to endure hard poverty, and who fears dishonor worse than death, and is not afraid to die for cherished friends or fatherland.

Horace - Epistles
- He who has begun has half done. Dare to be wise; begin!

Horace - Epistles
- Make money, money by fair means if you can, if not, but any means money.

Horace -
- If you wish me to weep, you must mourn first yourself.

Horace - Odes
- Seize the day, put no trust in the morrow!
[Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.]

Horace - Satires
- There is measure in all things.

Horace -
- He will always be a slave who does not know how to live upon a little.

Horace -
- With silence favor me.
(Favete Linguis)

Horace - Epistles
- The years as they pass plunder us of one thing after another.

Horace - Epistles
- Think to yourself that every day is your last; the hour to which you do not look forward will come as a welcome surprise.

Horace -
- Faults are soon copied.

Horace - Epistles
- Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled.

Horace - Odes
- In adversity remember to keep an even mind.

Horace - Epistles
- It is when I struggle to be brief that I become obscure.

Horace - Epistles
- The covetous man is ever in want.

Horace -
- Mediocrity is not allowed to poets, either by the gods or man.

Horace -
- He who postpones the hour of living rightly is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses.

Horace - Odes
- Force without wisdom falls of its own weight.

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- Of writing well the source and fountainhead is wise thinking.

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- Wisdom is not wisdom when it is derived from books alone.

Horace - Satires
- Life grants nothing to us mortals without hard work.

Horace -
- There is a measure in everything. There are fixed limits beyond which and short of which right cannot find a resting place.

Horace -
- Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.

Horace -
- Life is largely a matter of expectation.

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- Whatever advice you give, be brief.

Horace -
- I will not add another word.

Horace - Odes
- Whoever cultivates the golden mean avoids both the poverty of a hovel and the envy of a palace.