Many of the best-known
Latin quotations are from Horace, including
carpe diem '
seize the day',
dulce et decorum est 'it is
sweet and
fitting',
in medias res 'in the
middle of things', and
nil desperandum 'keep your
pecker up' (roughly).
Some more good ones:
- Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio
I labour to be brief, I become obscure.
- Lusisti satis, edisti satis atque bibisti; tempus abire tibi est
You've played enough, you've eaten and drunk enough; it's time for you to go away.
- Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret
You expel Nature with a fork, still it comes back.
- Non omnis moriar
I shall not wholly die.
- Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus
The mountains give birth, a ridiculous mouse is born.
This of course is the origin of the Warner Brothers cartoon set in prehistoric times with Mendelssohn's Fingal's Cave used as the music.
- vos exemplaria Graeca, nocturna versate manu, versate diurna
Turn over the writings of the Greeks by day, turn them over by night.
- sapere aude
Dare to be wise.
Some other phrases, perhaps better known in English than in Latin these days, are also his: Homer nods (dormitat Homerus); the irritable tribe of poets (genus irritabile vatum).
He also coined the word sesquipedalian, literally a foot and a half long, for very long words.