Horace Quotes

The most savage controversies are about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.

We are quite at ease in this no man's land of ignorance and doubt and dispute, absorbed in the ambiguities of trying to reach truth by mixing fact with invention.

As I said before, there are often disagreements as to what a particular set of facts mean. That is not at all unusual, and one shouldn't read into it more than is there.

Life itself is controversy.

It's tough to get two lawyers to agree on anything.

Many a long dispute among divines [theologians] may be thus abridged: It is so; It is not so. It is so; it is not so.

The question is yet before the court.

Everyone who tells a story tells it differently, just to remind us that everybody sees it differently. Some people say there are true things to be found, some people say all kinds of things can be proved. I don't believe them. The only thing for certain is how complicated it all is, like string full of knots. It's all there but hard to find the beginning and impossible to fathom the end. The best you can do is admire the cat's cradle, and maybe knot it up a bit more.

The grammarians are arguing.

I asked you, baby, If you understood- You told me that you didn't, But you thought you would.

It was strange how you could never form any conclusion from what women said. It was not that they did not know what they were talking about, but you never drew the right conclusions.

Politics is not what it pretends to be, the expression of a collective will. Politics breathes well only where this will is multiple, hesitant, confused, and obscure even to itself.

The unknowable creates the greatest controversies.

Our actions are like blank rhymes, to which everyone applies what sense he pleases.

From this point forth, we shall be leaving the firm foundation of fact and journeying together through the murky marshes of memory into thickets of wildest guesswork.

The truth always carries the ambiguity of the words used to express it.

I think there is no one answer. It is still a struggle, there are tensions and I'm sure there are many people who would like to see these questions laid to rest or cease to be posed altogether.

It were endless to dispute upon everything that is disputable.

Mystery is the basic element of all works of art.

History is the great propagator of doubt.

Moral: It all depends.

Who can really distinguish between the sea and what's reflected in it? Or tell the difference between the falling rain and loneliness?

Nothing is black or white.

If I knew what the meanings of my books were, I wouldn't have bothered to write them.

It is a precarious undertaking to say anything reliable about aims and intentions.