Horace Years Quotations

Why do you hasten to remove anything which hurts your eye, while if something affects your soul you postpone the cure until next year?

Let your literary compositions be kept from the public eye for nine years at least.

Let it (what you have written) be kept back until the ninth year. [Lat., Nonumque prematur in annum.]

I have reared a memorial more enduring than brass, and loftier than the regal structure of the pyramids, which neither the corroding shower nor the powerless north wind can destroy; no, not even unending years nor the flight of time itself. I shall not entirely die. The greater part of me shall escape oblivion. [Lat., Exegi monumentum aera perennius Regalique situ pyramidum altius, Quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotens Possit diruere aut innumerabilis Annorum series et fuga temporum. Non omnis moriar, multaque pars mei Vitabit Libitinam.]

Not to hope for things to last forever, is what the year teaches and even the hour which snatches a nice day away.

Our years Glide silently away. No tears, No loving orisons repair The wrinkled cheek, the whitening hair That drop forgotten to the tomb.

The changing year's successive plan Proclaims mortality to man.

Alas, Postumus, the fleeting years slip by, nor will piety give any stay to wrinkles and pressing old age and untamable death.

Alas! the fleeting years, how they roll on!

Multa ferunt anni venientes commoda secum, Multa recedentes adimiunt. (The years, as they come, bring many agreeable things with them; as they go, they take many away.)

Enjoy thankfully any happy hour heaven may send you, nor think that your delights will keep till another year.

If anything affects your eye, you hasten to have it removed; if anything affects your mind, you postpone the cure for a year. [Lat., Quae laedunt oculum festinas demere; si quid Est animum, differs curandi tempus in annum.]

Years, following years, steal something every day; At last they steal us from ourselves away.

The years as they pass plunder us of one thing after another.

Let your poem be kept nine years.