Horace Quotes

Ah, Miss Harriet, it would do us no harm to remember oftener than we do, that vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!

Virtue lies half way between two opposite vices.

Moral virtue is a mean . . . between two vices, one of excess and the other of defect; . . . it is such a mean because it aims at hitting the middle point in feelings and in actions. This is why it is a hard task to be good, for it is hard to find the middle point in anything.

Moral qualities are so constituted as to be destroyed by excess and by deficiency . . .

Temperance and bravery, then, are ruined by excess and deficiency, but preserved by the mean.

Some vices miss what is right because they are deficient, others because they are excessive, in feelings or in actions, while virtue finds and chooses the mean.

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.

Virtue lies in the middle ground.

In avoiding one vice fools rush into the opposite extreme.

Vices are simply overworked virtues.

It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil.

Purity without balance is its own corruption.

The vices respectively fall short of or exceed what is right in both passions and actions, while virtue both finds and chooses that which is intermediate.

Every vice is only an exaggeration of a necessary and virtuous function.

It is the function of vice to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.

The best things carried to excess are wrong.

There is moderation even in excess.

Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.

Be not righteous overmuch.

In every extreme there is vice and not virtue.

Moderation in all things..

… vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!

Temperate temperance is best; intemperate temperance injures the cause of temperance.

This much then, is clear: in all our conduct it is the mean that is to be commended.

You don’t know the meaning of moderation, do you, my darling? A happy medium is something I wonder if you’ll ever learn.