Horace Quotes

What wonders does not wine! It discloses secrets; ratifies and confirms our hopes; thrusts the coward forth to battle; eases the anxious mind of its burden; instructs in arts. Whom has not a cheerful glass made eloquent! Whom not quite free and easy from pinching poverty!

Think of the wonders uncorked by wine! It opens secrets, gives heart to our hopes, pushes the cowardly into battle, lifts the load from anxious minds, and evokes talents. Thanks to the bottle's prompting no one is lost for words, no one who's cramped by poverty fails to find release.

Wine makes a man more pleased with himself; I do not say it makes him more pleasing to others.

Wine is wont to show the mind of man.

Wine gives courage and makes men more apt for passion.

Wine gives a man nothing. It neither gives him knowledge nor wit; it only animates a man, and enables him to bring out what a dread of the company has repressed. It only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.

If you subtracted all of the great artists who never drank, who never went to excess, you wouldn't have any more art left. What kind of poem are you gonna get out of a glass of iced tea?

Art's a staple. Like bread or wine or a warm coat in winter. Those who think it is a luxury have only a fragment of a mind. Man's spirit grows hungry for art in the same way his stomach growls for food.

I write right off the typer. I call it my "machinegun." I hit it hard, usually late at night while drinking wine and listening to classical music on the radio and smoking mangalore ganesh beedies.

Let those who drink not, but austerely dine, dry up in law; the Muses smell of wine.

The things keeping you back-these embarrassing, boring, stupid obstacles-are the heart of what it is to be human. They’re the whole reason for making and needing art. So you might as well go ahead and begin in whatever way you can right now.

Whither, O god of wine, art thou hurrying me, whilst under thy all-powerful influence?

Art is wine and experience is the brandy we distill from it.

Doing a life study while drunk and in the process of being seduced is never a formula for quality art.

and I get refill number three or four and the wine is making my bones loose and it's giving my hair a red sheen and my breasts are blooming and my eyes feel sultry and wise and the dress is water.

The wine urges me on, the bewitching wine, which sets even a wise man to singing and to laughing gently and rouses him up to dance and brings forth words which were better unspoken.

Two of my favorite artists are Josh Smith and Joe Bradley. But I argued against them for years, until I grew to love them and felt stupid for my immediate reaction towards their work. Now, I wouldn't be happier than to simply be their friend and to talk to them about what got them making art that was years ahead of my understanding. I never went to school for art or was told what to like or when. So every day is a learning process, like most of life.

Wine unlocks the breast.

When there is plenty of wine, sorrow and worry take wing.

Wine can of their wits the wise beguile, Make the sage frolic, and the serious smile

Sometimes life is hard. Things go wrong—in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do: make good art. . . . Someone on the internet thinks what you’re doing is stupid or evil or it’s all been done before: make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, eventually time will take the sting away, and it doesn’t even matter. Do what only you can do best: make good art.

An epithet or metaphor drawn from nature ennobles art; an epithet or metaphor drawn from art degrades nature.

All important things in art have always originated from the deepest feeling about the mystery of Being.