Great effort is required to arrest decay and restore vigor. One must exercise proper deliberation, plan carefully before making a move, and be alert in guarding against relapse following a renaissance.
It’s a good thing to be foolishly gay once in a while.
Few cross the river of time and are able to reach non-being. Most of them run up and down only on this side of the river. But those who when they know the law follow the path of the law, they shall reach the other shore and go beyond the realm of death.
I am not bound over to swear allegiance to any master; where the storm drives me I turn in for shelter.
Punishment closely follows guilt as its companion.
One night awaits all, and death’s path must be trodden once and for all.
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.
All else-valor, a good name, glory, everything in heaven and earth-is secondary to the charm of riches.
Remember you must die whether you sit about moping all day long or whether on feast days you stretch out in a green field, happy with a bottle of Falernian from your innermost cellar.
That destructive siren, sloth, is ever to be avoided.
Whom does undeserved honour please, and undeserved blame alarm, but the base and the liar?
And Tragedy should blush as much to stoop To the low mimic follies of a farce, As a grave matron would to dance with girls.
Glory drags all men along, low as well as high, bound captive at the wheels of her glittering car.
As riches grow, care follows, and a thirst For more and more.
Once sent out, a word takes wings beyond recall.
Drive Nature out with a pitchfork, yet she hurries back, And will burst through your foolish contempt, triumphant.
Of writing well the source and fountainhead is wise thinking.
Virtue consists in fleeing vice.
Not even for an hour can you bear to be alone, nor can you advantageously apply your leisure time, but you endeavor, a fugitive and wanderer, to escape from yourself, now vainly seeking to banish remorse by wine, and now by sleep; but the gloomy companion presses on you, and pursues you as you fly.
Sport begets tumultuous strife and wrath, and wrath begets fierce quarrels and war to the death.