Latin Authors

"Iustum et tenacem propositi virum non civium ardor prava iubentium, non vultus instantis tyranni mente quatit solida."

"Aequa lege Necessitas Sortitur insignes et imos; Omne capax movet urna nomen."

"Virginibus puerisque canto."

"Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume, labuntur anni nec pietas moram rugis et instanti senectae adferet indomitaeque morti."

"Auream quisquis mediocritatem diligit, tutus caret obsoleti sordibus tecti, caret invidenda sobrius aula."

"Aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem."

"Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero pulsanda tellus."

"O matre pulchra filia pulchrior"

"Dum loquimur, fugerit invida Aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero."

"Permitte divis cetera."

"Nunc vino pellite curas."

"Nil desperandum..."

"Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longam."

"Nequiquam deus abscidit Prudens Oceano dissociabili Terras, si tamen impiae Non tangenda rates transiliunt vada."

"Bellaque matribus detestata"

"Dum licet, in rebus jucundis vive beatus; Vive memor quam sis aevi brevis."

"Sed convivatoris uti ducis ingenium res Adversae nudare solent, celare secundae."

"Heu, Fortuna, quis est crudelior in nos Te deus? Ut semper gaudes illudere rebus Humanis!"

"Ille sinistrorsum, hic dextrorsum abit : unus utrique Error, sed variis illudit partibus."

"Quocirca vivite fortes, fortiaque adversis opponite pectora rebus"

"Adclinis falsis animus meliora recusat."

"in pace, ut sapiens, aptarit idonea bello"

"Nil sine magno vita labore dedit mortalibus."

"Atqui si vitiis mediocribus ac mea paucis mendosa est natura, alioqui recta, velut si egregio inspersos reprehendas corpore naevos, si neque avaritiam neque sordes nec mala lustra obiciet vere quisquam mihi, purus et insons, ut me collaudem, si et vivo carus amicis... at hoc nunc laus illi debetur et a me gratia maior. nil me paeniteat sanum patris huius, eoque non, ut magna dolo factum negat esse suo pars, quod non ingenuos habeat clarosque parentis, sic me defendam."

"Non satis est puris versum perscribere verbis."

"Inde fit ut raro, qui se vixisse beatum dicat et exacto contentus tempore vita cedat uti conviva satur, reperire queamus."

"Let’s put a limit to the scramble for money. ... Having got what you wanted, you ought to begin to bring that struggle to an end."

"Saepe stilum vertas, iterum quae digna legi sint scripturus."

"What odds does it make to the man who lives within Nature's bounds, whether he ploughs a hundred acres or a thousand?"

"Bona pars hominum est decepta cupidine falso 'nil satis est', inquit, 'quia tanti quantum habeas sis."

"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."

"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."

"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 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."

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

"Cras ingens iterabimus aequor"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"Quamquam ridentem dicere verum quid vetat? ut pueris olim dant crustula blandi doctores, elementa velint ut discere prima."

"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."

"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."

"Ars longa, vita brevis."

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