“You may drive out Nature with a pitchfork, yet she still will hurry back.”

“You may thresh a hundred thousand bushels of grain, / But more than mine your belly will not contain.”

“The aim of the poet is to inform or delight, or to combine together, in what he says, both pleasure and applicability to life. In instructing, be brief in what you say in order that your readers may grasp it quickly and retain it faithfully. Superfluous words simply spill out when the mind is already full. Fiction invented in order to please should remain close to reality.”

“Surely a Man may speak Truth with a smiling countenance.”

“He who feared that he would not succeed sat still.”

“He will through life be master of himself and a happy man who from day to day can have said, "I have lived: tomorrow the Father may fill the sky with black clouds or with cloudless sunshine.”

“Fortune makes a fool of those she favors too much.”