All Quotes

"Abnormis sapiens crassaque Minerva."

"Ab ovo Usque ad mala."

"Absentem qui rodit amicum, Qui non defendit alio culpante, solutos Qui captat risus hominum, famamque dicacis; Fingere qui non visa potest, commissa tacere Qui nequit, hic niger est, hunc tu, Romane, caveto."

"Adsit Regula, peccatis quæ pœnas irroget æquas Ne scutica dignum horribili sectere flagello."

"Ars longa, vita brevis."

"Note that Horace wrote four different kinds of poems on account of the four ages, the Odes for boys, the Ars Poetica for young men, the Satires for mature men, the Epistles for old and complete men."

"When I was a boy I knew the Odes of Horace backwards and forwards, and when I came to manhood year by year those odes came knocking at the door of my heart at the most unexpected times and places."

"What harmony can there be between Christ and the devil? What has Horace to do with the Psalter?"

"The influences which formed his moral and poetical character, are the prevalent modes of feeling and thought among the people, who had achieved the conquest of the world, and, weary of their own furious contentions, now began to slumber in the proud consciousness of universal empire. In him as in an individual example appears the change which took place in the fortunes, position, sentiments, occupations, estimation, character, mode of living, when the Roman, from the citizen of a free and turbulent republic, became the subject of a peaceful monarchy."

"The mingling intellectual elements blend together, even in more singular union, in the mind of the Poet. Grecian education and tastes have not polished off the old Roman independence; the imitator of Greek forms of verse writes the purest vernacular Latin; the Epicurean philosophy has not subdued his masculine shrewdness and good sense to dreaming indolence. In the Roman part of his character he blends some reminiscences of the sturdy virtue of the Sabine or Apulian mountaineers, with the refined manners of the city."

"As compared with the highest lyric poetry, the Odes of Horace are greatly deficient; but as occasional pieces inspired by friendship, by moral sentiment, or as graceful and finished love-verses, they are perfect; their ease, spirit, perspicuity, elegance, and harmony compensate, as far as may be, for the want of the nobler characteristics of daring conception, vehemence, sublimity, and passion."

"His mind was by no means speculative. His was the plain, practical philosophy of common sense... the wisdom of Horace—it may be said without disparagement, for it was the only real attainable wisdom—was that of the world."

"Horace is addressing men accustomed to deal with men—men formed in the vigorous school of public life; and though now reposing perhaps from those more solid and important cares, maintaining that practical energy of character by which they had forced their way to eminence. That sterner practical genius of the Roman people survived the free institutions of Rome; the Romans seemed, as it were, in their idlest moods, to condescend to amusement, not to consider it, like the Greek, one of the common necessities, the ordinary occupations of life. Horace, therefore, has been, and ever will be, the familiar companion, the delight, not of the mere elegant scholar alone, or the imaginative reader, but, we had almost written, the manual of the statesman and the study of the moral philosopher. Of Rome, or of the Roman mind, no one can know anything who is not profoundly versed in Horace; and whoever really understands Horace will have a more perfect and accurate knowledge of the Roman manners and Roman mind than the most diligent and laborious investigator of the Roman antiquities."

"Horace is not satisfied with some superficial vividness; that would betray his sense; he sees further and more clearly into his subject: to describe itself his mind goes fishing and ferreting through the whole treasure-house of words and figures of speech; as his concepts surpass the ordinary, it is not ordinary words that he needs."

"Of the lyric poets, Horace is almost the only one worth reading; he can be lofty sometimes, and yet he is also full of charm and grace, versatile in his Figures, and felicitously daring in his choice of words."

"His chief claim to literary originality is not that on which he himself rested his hopes of immortality,—that of being the first to adapt certain lyrical metres to the Latin tongue,—but rather that of being the first of those whose works have reached us who establishes a personal relation with his reader, speaks to him as a familiar friend, gives him good advice, tells him the story of his life, and shares with him his private tastes and pleasures,—and all this without any loss of self-respect, any want of modesty or breach of good manners, and in a style so lively and natural that each new generation of readers might fancy that he was addressing them personally and speaking to them on subjects of everyday modern interest."

"The best Genius and most Gentleman-like of Roman Poets."

"We have seen that it is still a debated question whether Horace was a poet. Whatever the answer to that question may be, and whether it be considered a question which requires to be asked or not, it cannot be denied that he possesses in perfection the mechanical requisites for the gay art, an exquisite ear for rhythm, and curious felicity of expression. And while we must deny to him the genuine ardour which makes the passion of Catullus breathe and burn, we cannot but recognize in him qualities which will secure for him the admiration and love of every lover of literature, as long as there exists in the minds of men a sympathy with an honest, manly, and cultured spirit, a genial friendliness, sound common-sense, and urbane self-respect."

"But to the modern world, down to this very great date, Horace is almost an idol. He has forged a link of union between intellects so diverse as those of Dante, Montaigne, Bossuet, Lafontaine, and Voltaire, Hooker, Chesterfield, Gibbon, Wordsworth, and Thackeray. Mystic and atheist, scoffer and preacher, recluse and leader of fashion have in Horace one subject on which they are sympathetic with each other. Gibbon never traveled without a copy of his poems in his pocket; Hooker fled with his Horace to the fields from the reproaches of a railing wife; Thackeray is content if his hero, the future man of the world, has enough Latin on leaving school "to quote Horace respectably through life." Indeed, a certain modicum of Horace is often the remnant of classic lore that the average Englishman and Irishman care to carry with them into the arena of active life. A fancied slight to the memory of Horace is resented in England as a personal insult, and a visit to Italy is nothing unless you have done your duty to the shrine of the poet."

"We owe to Horace a precious store of pointed aphorisms and shrewd comments on life, which, apart from all controversies about his place in poetry, must ever establish a kind of personal relation with his reader, and must have a permanent (perhaps an increasing) value for the world. His odes, moreover, as regards diction and metrification, are a marvelously successful experiment. Whatever may be thought about the meaning which underlies them, their form is perfection itself, and they defy imitation. No attempt to reproduce their effect in Latin or in any other language has met with even a moderate measure of success."

"The gaiety of his spirit and the music of his lyrics will ever fascinate the young; his shrewd common sense will attract the man of the world, whatever be his time of life, his country, or his epoch; and he will always be the most perfect exponent of the actual life and movement of the Augustan age."

"And this reft house is that the which he built, Lamented Jack!"

"Her gentle limbs did she undress, And lay down in her loveliness."

"‘Alas!’ said she, ‘we ne’er can be Made happy by compulsion.’"

"Lingering he raised his latch at eve, Though tired in heart and limb: He loved no other place, and yet Home was no home to him."

"A charm For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whom No sound is dissonant which tells of life."

"Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade, Death came with friendly care; The opening bud to heaven conveyed, And bade it blossom there."

"Poor little foal of an oppressèd race! I love the languid patience of thy face."

"Blest hour! it was a luxury — to be!"

"O! the one Life, within us and abroad, Which meets all Motion, and becomes its soul, A Light in Sound, a sound-like power in Light, Rhythm in all Thought, and Joyance every where."

"And what if all of animated nature Be but organic harps diversly fram'd, That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze, At once the Soul of each, and God of All?"

"O! I do love thee, meek Simplicity!"

"So for the mother’s sake the child was dear, And dearer was the mother for the child."

""Most musical, most melancholy" bird! A melancholy bird! Oh! idle thought! In nature there is nothing melancholy. But some night-wandering man, whose heart was pierced With the remembrance of a grievous wrong, Or slow distemper, or neglected love, (And so, poor wretch! filled all things with himself, And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale Of his own sorrow) he, and such as he, First named these notes a melancholy strain."

"Thou rising Sun! thou blue rejoicing Sky! Yea! every thing that is and will be free! Bear witness for me, whereso'er ye be, With what deep worship I have still adored The spirit of divinest Liberty."

"Yes, while I stood and gazed, my temples bare, And shot my being through earth, sea, and air, Possessing all things with intensest love, O Liberty! my spirit felt thee there."

"The frost performs its secret ministry, Unhelped by any wind."

"Sea, and hill, and wood, With all the numberless goings-on of life, Inaudible as dreams!"

"Only that film, which fluttered on the grate, Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing."

"Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee, Whether the summer clothe the general earth With greenness, or the redbreasts sit and sing Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch Of mossy apple-tree, while all the thatch Smokes in the sun-thaw: whether the eave-drops fall Heard only in the trances of the blast, Or whether the eave-drops fall Heard only in the trances of the blast, Or if the secret ministry of frost Shall hang them up in silent icicles, Quietly shining to the quiet moon."

"Forth from his dark and lonely hiding place (Portentous-sight!) the owlet Atheism, Sailing an obscene wings athwart the noon, Drops his blue-fringèd lids, and holds them close, And hooting at the glorious sun in Heaven, Cries out, "Where is it?""

"From his brimstone bed at break of day, A walking the Devil is gone, To look at his snug little farm the earth, And see how his stock goes on."

"And backward and forward he switched his long tail As a gentleman switches his cane."

"His jacket was red and his breeches were blue, And there was a hole where the tail came through."

"He saw a Lawyer killing a viper On a dunghill hard by his own stable; And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind Of Cain and his brother, Abel."

"He saw a cottage with a double coach-house, A cottage of gentility; And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin Is pride that apes humility."

"As he went through Cold-Bath Fields he saw A solitary cell; And the Devil was pleased, for it gave him a hint For improving his prisons in Hell."

"Strongly it bears us along in swelling and limitless billows, Nothing before and nothing behind but the sky and the ocean."

"In the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column; In the pentameter aye falling in melody back."

"All thoughts, all passions, all delights, Whatever stirs this mortal frame, All are but ministers of Love, And feed his sacred flame."