Horace (65–8 BCE,) fully Quintus Horatius Flaccus, was a Roman poet of the Augustan age. A notable satirist and literary critic, he is best known for his Satires (c.35 BCE,) Epodes (c.30 BCE,) Odes (c.23 BCE,) Epistles (c.20 BCE,) and Ars Poetica (c.19 BCE; The Art of Poetry)—these literary classics have been the cornerstones of Western poetry.
Much is known about Horace’s life from a biography by Suetonius and Horace’s own testimony. Born in Venusia (modern-day Venosa in southwest Italy) to a former slave, Horace was sent to Rome and then Athens for an education matching that of a usual upper-class Roman of the time. In Athens, Horace joined Brutus’s army as a junior officer. However, with the fall of Brutus, Horace’s family lost much of its property. Horace returned to Italy under a general amnesty, wrote his first poems, and made friends with Virgil, Varius Rufus, and Gaius Maecenas.
Horace’s standing as the most significant Roman lyric poet rests on the excellence of form revealed by the Odes, and on the depth and detail of his self-portraiture in his literary works. He was considered the principal authority on the composition of poetry; his Ars Poetica set the standards for poetry to govern literary criticism even in the present day.
Horace’s proficient mastery of a wide variety of lyric forms is matched both by the wealth of his subject matter—ranging from politics to love, poetry to ethics, and daily life to biography—and by the multiplicity of his tones, which shift from satire to didacticism and from affection to diatribe.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
We are often deterred from crime by the disgrace of others.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Topics: Crime, Criminals
The poets aim is either to profit or to please, or to blend in one the delightful and the useful. Whatever the lesson you would convey, be brief, that your hearers may catch quickly what is said and faithfully retain it. Every superfluous word is spilled from the too-full memory.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Words will not fail when the matter is well considered.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Topics: Words
What fugitive from his country can also escape from himself.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
What the discordant harmony of circumstances would and could effect.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Topics: Harmony
Mistakes are their own instructors
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Topics: Mistakes
Does he council you better who bids you, Money, by right means, if you can: but by any means, make money ?
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Topics: Money
Man learns more readily and remembers more willingly what excites his ridicule than what deserves esteem and respect.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
A good and faithful judge ever prefers the honorable to the expedient.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Topics: Justice
Gold will be slave or master.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Topics: Gold
Sweet and glorious it is to die for our country.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
If matters go badly now, they will not always be so.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Topics: Difficulty
The one who cannot restrain their anger will wish undone, what their temper and irritation prompted them to do.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Topics: Anger
He has not lived badly whose birth and death has been unnoticed by the world.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Topics: Life and Living
Necessity takes impartially the highest and the lowest.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Topics: Necessity
He will be loved when dead, who was envied when he was living.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Topics: Envy
Let us my friends snatch our opportunity from the passing day.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Topics: Opportunity
Whatever advice you give, be brief.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Topics: Advice
You must often make erasures if you mean to write what is worthy of being read a second time; and don’t labor for the admiration of the crowd, but be content with a few choice readers.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Topics: Writing, Writers, Reading, Art
In times of stress, be bold and valiant.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Topics: Courage, Stress
Get money first; virtue comes after.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Topics: Money
Mediocrity is not allowed to poets, either by the gods or men.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Topics: Mediocrity
When you introduce a moral lesson, let it be brief.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Topics: Brevity, Education, Teaching, Teachers
Believe that each day is the last to shine upon thee.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Many heroes lived before Agamemnon; but all are unknown and unwept, extinguished in everlasting night, because they have no spirited chronicler.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Topics: Biography, Legacy
No poems can please for long or live that are written by water drinkers.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Topics: Writing, Poetry
Knowledge without education is but armed injustice.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Topics: Knowledge
Poets wish to profit or to please.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Topics: Profit, Poetry
The common people are but ill judges of a man’s merits; they are slaves to fame, and their eyes are dazzled with the pomp of titles and large retinue. No wonder, then, that they bestow their honors on those who least deserve them.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Topics: Popularity
Who knows if the gods above will add tomorrow’s span to this day’s sum?
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Topics: The Present
We are free to yield to truth.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Topics: Freedom
Only a stomach that rarely feels hungry scorns common things.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Topics: Blessings, Gratitude
Those that are little, little things suit.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Topics: Little Things, Things
A picture is a poem without words.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Topics: Artists, Art, Arts, Painting
What we learn only through the ears makes less impression upon our minds than what is presented to the trustworthy eye.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Topics: Eyes
I teach that all men are mad.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Topics: Insanity
It is your business when the wall next door catches fire.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Topics: Neighbors
As a rule, adversity reveals genius and prosperity hides it.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Topics: Adversity
The power of daring anything their fancy suggest, as always been conceded to the painter and the poet.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Topics: Risk
And may I live the remainder of my life for myself; may there be plenty of books and many years’ store of the fruits of the earth.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Topics: Happiness
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