Tao Te Ching
Horace
65 – 8 BCE
One of the most famous Roman poets during his time and still considered one of the best from any time, Horace also became a spokesman for the Caesars during Rome’s change from Republic to Empire. A continuing aspect of Western education until our own times, he influenced Milton, Byron, Keats, Wordsworth, Omar Khayyam, Kipling, Robert Frost and most Western poets. The insight and wisdom condensed in his famous phrases like “carpe diem“ vividly live in our own culture more than 2000 years after his time.
Lineages
Epicureanism Roman / Italian
Eras
Chinese
Western Han (206 BCE – 9 CE)Unlisted Sources
Ars Poetica
Epistles
Ode III
Ode XI
Odes
Odes (23 BCE)
Satires (35 BCE)
Quotes by Horace (29 quotes)
“A picture is a poem without words.”
Chapters:
64. Ordinary Mind
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“carpe diem (seize the day)… As we speak, cruel time is fleeing. Seize the day, believing as little as possible in the morrow.”
Chapters:
35. The Power of Goodness
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“Fortune makes a fool of those she favors too much.”
Chapters:
44. Fame and Fortune
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“Happy the man, and happy he alone, he who can call today his own: he who, secure within, can say, tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.”
Chapters:
40. Returning
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“He has half the deed done who has made a beginning.”
Chapters:
64. Ordinary Mind
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“He will always be a slave who does not know how to live upon a little.”
Chapters:
67. Three Treasures
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“How slight and insignificant is the thing which casts down or restores a mind greedy for praise.”
Chapters:
77. Stringing a Bow
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“The lofty pine is oftenest shaken by the winds; High towers fall with a heavier crash; And the lightning strikes the highest mountain.”
Chapters:
66. Go Low
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“They change their sky, not their soul, who rush across the sea.”
Chapters:
47. Effortless Success
80. A Golden Age
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“Think to yourself that every day is your last; the hour to which you do not look forward will come as a welcome surprise.”
Chapters:
50. Claws and Swords
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“Why so quick to remove a speck from your eye, when If it's your mind, you put off the cure till next year?”
Chapters:
54. Planting Well
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“Wisdom is not wisdom when it is derived from books alone.”
Chapters:
14. Finding and Following the Formless Form
48. Unlearning
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“It is a great piece of folly to sacrifice the inner for the outer and trade the whole or greater part of our quiet leisure and independence for fame, fortune, pleasure, power or any of the other external seductions.”
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“How little is required to enslave a mind greedy for praise.
(Sic leve, sic parvum est, animum quod laudis avarum Subruit ac reficit)”
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“[Pindar’s poetry is like] A river bursting its banks and rushing down a mountain with uncontrollable momentum, rain-saturated, churning, and chanting thunder.”
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“Give me again my hollow Tree,
A crust of Bread and Liberty.”
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“don't meddle with Babylonian horoscopes. How much better to accept whatever comes”
from Ode XI
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“The myths have been invented by wise men to strengthen the laws and teach moral truths.”
from Ars Poetica
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“Leave as little as possible for tomorrow.”
from Ode XI
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“Who so cultivates the golden mean avoids the poverty of a hovel and the envy of a palace.”
from Odes
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“Who then is free? The wise man who commands his passions, who fears not death, nor chain, firmly resisting his appetites and despising the honors of the world, who relies wholly on himself, whose angular points of character have all been rounded off and polished.”
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“Who then is free? The wise man who commands his passions, who fears not death, nor chain, firmly resisting his appetites and despising the honors of the world, who relies wholly on himself, whose angular points of character have all been rounded off and polished and against whom Fortune in her onset is ever defeated.”
from Ars Poetica
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“a wife and dower, credit and friends, even birth and beauty, are all the gifts of Queen Money.”
from Epistles
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“Pale Death knocks with impartial foot at poor men's hovels and kings' palaces.”
from Odes
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“I have built a monument more lasting than bronze and set higher than the pyramids of kings. I shall not wholly die.”
from Ode III
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“If you study the history and records of the world, you must admit that the source of justice is the fear of injustice.”
from Satires (35 BCE)
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“Patience makes lighter
What sorrow may not heal.”
from Odes (23 BCE)
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Quotes about Horace (4 quotes)
“I have built a monument more lasting than bronze and set higher than the pyramids of kings. I shall not wholly die.”
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“Horace is the complete man of the world, with tolerance for all and partisanship for none. A Benjamin Franklin turned poet, a poetical Montaigne, a poet whose distinguishing characteristic is common sense with that most delightful gift of enjoying keenly all life's simplest pleasures... Who would not like to see Horace walk in through his door any day in the year? Immediately everything would seem more agreeable”
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“Ovid and Horace challenge comparison with the best elegiac and lyric poets of Greece.”
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“While Horace endeavored to make clear the very spirit and essence of the ancient myths, Euhemerus pretended, on the contrary, that 'myths were the legendary history of kings and heroes, transformed into gods by the admiration of the nations.' It is the latter method which was inferentially followed by Christians when they agreed upon the acceptation of euhemerized patriarchs, and mistook them for men who had really lived.”
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