Horace Mind Quotations

What we learn only through the ears makes less impression upon our minds than what is presented to the trustworthy eye.

You traverse the world in search of happiness which is within the reach of every man. A contented mind confers it on all.

Remember when life's path is steep to keep your mind even.

In adversity, remember to keep an even mind.

Clogged with yesterday's excess, the body drags the mind down with it.

Why harass with eternal purposes a mind to weak to grasp them?

I can never forget suffering and I will never forget sunset. I came home with all of it in my mind.

Remember to keep the mind calm in difficult moments.

A well-prepared mind hopes in adversity and fears in prosperity. [Lat., Sperat infestis, metuit secundis Alteram sortem, bene preparatum Pectus.]

The body loaded by the excess of yesterday, depresses the mind also, and fixes to the ground this particle of divine breath. [Lat., Quin corpus onustum Hesternis vitiis, animum quoque praegravat una Atque affigit humo divinae particulam aurae.]

A mind that is charmed by false appearances refuses better things. [Lat., Acclinis falsis animus meliora recusat.]

If anything affects your eye, you hasten to have it removed; if anything affects your mind, you postpone the cure for a year. [Lat., Quae laedunt oculum festinas demere; si quid Est animum, differs curandi tempus in annum.]

Superfluous words simply spill out when the mind is already full.

We are more speedily and fatally corrupted by domestic examples of vice, and particularly when they are impressed on our minds as from authority.

Superfluous advice is not retained by the full mind.

What we hear strikes the mind with less force than what we see.

Let your mind, happily contented with the present, care not what the morrow will bring with it.

The body, enervated by the excesses of the preceding day, weighs down and prostates the mind also.

Not treasured wealth, nor the consul's lictor, can dispel the mind's bitter conflicts and the cares that flit, like bats, about your fretted roofs.

The aim of the poet is to inform or delight, or to combine together, in what he says, both pleasure and applicability to life. In instructing, be brief in what you say in order that your readers may grasp it quickly and retain it faithfully. Superfluous words simply spill out when the mind is already full. Fiction invented in order to please should remain close to reality.

How slight and insignificant is the thing which casts down or restores a mind greedy for praise.

Doctrina sed vim promovet insitam. Instruction enlarges the natural powers of the mind.

With self-discipline most anything is possible. Theodore Roosevelt Rule your mind or it will rule you.

It is not enough for poems to be fine; they must charm, and draw the mind of the listener at will.

Whatever you teach, be brief; what is quickly said, the mind readily receives and faithfully retains, everything superfluous runs over as from a full vessel.

That best of blessings, a contented mind.

What does drunkenness not accomplish? It unlocks secrets, confirms our hopes, urges the indolent into battle, lifts the burden from anxious minds, teaches new arts.

As a neighboring funeral terrifies sick misers, and fear obliges them to have some regard for themselves; so, the disgrace of others will often deter tender minds from vice.

It is sweet to let the mind unbend on occasion.

The body oppressed by excesses bears down the mind, and depresses to the earth any portion of the divine spirit we had been endowed with.

The mind that is cheerful in its present state, will be averse to all solicitude as to the future, and will meet the bitter occurrences of life with a placid smile.

Be brief, that the mind may catch thy precepts, and the more easily retain them.

Whatever things injure your eye you are anxious to remove; but things which affect your mind you defer.