Horace Quotes

We assume therefore that moral virtue is the quality of acting in the best way in relation to pleasures and pains, and that vice is the opposite.

Most men are more willing to indulge in easy vices than to practise laborious virtues.

Never support two weaknesses at the same time. It's your combination sinners - your lecherous liars and your miserly drunkards - who dishonor the vices and bring them into bad repute.

The weak-minded man is the slave of his vices and the dupe of his virtues.

To all the rest of his Absurdities, (for vice is always unreasonable,) he adds one more, who expects that Vertue from another which he won't practise himself.

Shun all vice, especially card playing.

Good actions ennoble us, and we are the sons of our deeds.

Respect for self is the beginning of cultivating virtue in men and women.

I stopped living according to my core values. I knew what I was doing was wrong but thought only about myself and thought I could get away with whatever I wanted to.

The end and perfection of our victories is to avoid the vices and infirmities of those whom we subdue.

What, pray, does it profit a man to teach others, and to be prating always about virtue, in high-sounding words, if he fails to give heed to his own instructions?

When our vices leave us, we like to imagine it is we who are leaving them.

I've tried to keep myself out of bad situations, and if that means I'm a Goody Two-shoes, so be it.

The word virtue is as useful to self-interest as the vices.

Good people struggle against what's imperfect about them. The people that we call 'bad' people embrace that kind of stuff, embrace the darker side.

Integrity in the Moment of Choice: Quality of life depends on what happens in the space between stimulus and response.

We should make virtue our master, not our servant.

A good man does not spy around for the black spots in others, but presses unswervingly on towards his mark.

You must do right before you feel good.

Every one of us ... knows better than he practices, and recognizes a better law than he obeys.

Should you be unfortunate enough to have vices, you may, to a certain degree, even dignify them by a strict observance of decorum;at least they will lose something of their natural turpitude.

The prevarication and white lies which a mind that keeps itself ambitiously pure is as uneasy under as a great artist under the false touches that no eye detects but his own, are worn as lightly as mere trimmings when once the actions have become a lie.

The vices enter into the composition of the virtues, as poisons into that of medicines. Prudence collects and arranges them, and uses them beneficially against the ills of life.

He cannot be vertuous that is not rigorous.

God is better served in resisting a temptation to evil than in many formal prayers.